Andreas Vinciguerra set up an all-Swedish second round match with top-seeded Robin Soderling after defeating Daniel Brands in three sets at the Swedish Open on Monday.
Wild card Vinciguerra came through 7-6 (6), 6-7 (5), 6-4 at the clay court tournament and will next face two-time French Open finalist Soderling, who was given a bye in the first round.
He will face a tough match against No. 5-ranked Soderling, who beat Juan Monaco in last year’s final to win the championship in front of his home crowd for the first time. He has five career titles to date.
Italy’s Potito Starace also advanced on Monday after brushing aside eighth-seeded Florent Serra of France 6-2, 6-2 on a hot day in southern Sweden.
In other matches, Spain’s Pere Riba beat Peter Luczak of Australia 4-6, 6-2, 7-6 (6) and Italy’s Fabio Fognini defeated Sweden’s Filip Prpic 6-7 (7), 6-3, 6-4.
■PALERMO OPEN
AP, PALERMO, Italy
Fourth-seeded Tsvetana Pironkova and fifth-seeded Kaia Kanepi have secured straight sets wins to advance into the second round of the Palermo Open.
Bulgaria’s Pironkova beat Anna Floris of Italy 6-4, 7-6 at the clay court tournament at the Country Time Club Viale dell’Olimpo stadium, while Estonia’s Kanepi saw off Rossana De Los Rios of Paraguay 7-5, 6-4.
In the two other first round matches on Monday, Jill Craybas of the US was pushed all the way by Uzbekistan’s Akgul Amanmuradova before winning 7-6, 7-5, and Mariana Duque Marino of Colombia defeated Slovakia’s Zuzana Kucova 6-4, 6-0.
■MERCEDES CUP
AP, STUTTGART, Germany
Eighth-seeded Victor Hanescu of Romania has been beaten in straight sets by Switzerland’s Marco Chiudinelli in the first round of the Mercedes Cup.
Hanescu, who reached the final here last year, lost 7-6 (4), 6-3 to the 66th-ranked Chiudinelli in a match that saw a lineswoman collapse with circulatory problems caused by the very hot temperatures. She had to be carried off the court, but Red Cross officials said later that she was feeling better.
Germany’s Mischa Zverev beat Sergiy Stakhovsky of the Ukraine 6-4, 6-3 in the other first round match on Monday at the TC Weissenhof grounds, and next will take on second-seeded Juergen Melzer of Austria.
Taiwanese world No. 1 women’s doubles star Hsieh Su-wei on Saturday overcame a first-set loss to win her opening match at the Madrid Open. Top seeds Hsieh and partner Elise Mertens of Belgium, with whom she last month won her fourth Indian Wells women’s doubles title, bounced back from a rocky first set to beat Asia Muhammad of the US and Aldila Sutjiadi of Indonesia 2-6, 6-4, 10-2. Hsieh and Mertens were next to face Heather Watson of the UK and Xu Yifan of China in the round of 16. Thirty-eight-year-old Hsieh last month reclaimed her world No. 1 spot after her Indian
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Chen Yi-tung (陳奕通) secured a historic Olympic berth on Sunday by winning the senior men’s foil event at the 2024 Asia Oceania Zonal Olympic Fencing Qualifiers in United Arab Emirates. Chen defeated Samuel Elijah of Singapore 15-4 in the final in Dubai to secure the only wild card in the event, making him the first male Olympian fencer from Taiwan in 36 years and only the sixth Taiwanese fencer to ever qualify for the quadrennial event. The last appearance by a Taiwanese male fencer at the Olympics was in 1988, when Wang San-tsai (王三財) and Cheng Ming-hsiang (鄭明祥) competed in Seoul. The
Rafael Nadal on Tuesday lost in straight sets to 31st-ranked Jiri Lehecka in the fourth round at the Madrid Open, while Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei advanced to the semi-finals in the women’s doubles. Nadal said that he was feeling good about his progress following his latest injury layoff. Nadal called it a “positive week” in every way and said his body held up well. “I was able to play four matches, a couple of tough matches,” Nadal said. “So very positive, winning three matches, playing four matches at the high level of tennis. I enjoyed a lot playing at home. I leave here with