Former world No. 1 Ana Ivanovic showed flashes of the form that took her to the pinnacle of tennis as she upset ninth-seed Victoria Azarenka 2-6, 7-6 (6), 6-2 in the first round of the Cincinnati Open on Monday.
Serb Ivanovic, a first-round casualty at San Diego last week, had appeared set for another early exit before rallying to beat the in-form Belarusian, who won the Stanford Classic earlier this month.
The 2008 French Open champion Ivanovic briefly held the world’s top ranking that year, but a subsequent collapse in form and a series of niggling injuries have seen her ranking slip to 62nd. The Serb was joined in the second round by another fallen former top-ranked player in Russia’s Dinara Safina, who eased to a 7-5, 6-4 win over Italy’s Roberta Vinci.
PHOTO: AFP
Safina will now face US Open champion Kim Clijsters in the second-round match. Clijsters has not played on the women’s tour since her Wimbledon quarter-final defeat.
Clijsters got a first-round bye at Cincinnati along with defending champion and top-seeded Jelana Jankovic.
Jankovic will open against 71st-ranked Vera Dushevina, who beat Anastasia Rodionova 6-2, 7-6 (7).
No. 13 Shahar Peer became the first seeded player to advance on Monday when Olga Govortsova retired while trailing 6-3, 4-1. Peer will meet Nuria Llagostera Vives in the second round. Vives needed three sets to overcome Vania King, 3-6, 6-3, 6-1, while Sara Errani moved on with a 6-4, 6-2 win over Jamie Hampton.
No. 16 Marion Bartoli also advanced with a 6-4, 6-0 win over Anabel Medina Garrigues and will next play Alona Bondarenko, a 3-6, 6-2, 6-3 winner over Dominika Cibulkova.
In other first-round matches, qualifier Bojana Jovanovski rallied to upset 14th-seeded Aravane Rezai 4-6, 6-3, 6-4. The first-round loss was the second straight for Rezai. The 19th-ranked Frenchwoman lost in the first round last week at San Diego.
Jovanovski, ranked 98th, will meet Akgul Amanmuradova in the second round. Amanmuradova cruised past Kimiko Date Krumm 6-1, 6-2 in a matchup of qualifiers.
Qualifier Monica Niculescu beat 91st-ranked Sabine Lisicki 6-3, 6-0, Yaroslava Shvedova defeated Alla Kudryavtseva 7-5, 6-4, qualifier Ayumi Morita knocked off Arantxa Parra Santonja 7-6 (7), 6-2, and Alisa Kleybanova beat Alexandra Dulgheru, 6-4, 6-4.
Jankovic said she is hoping to get tournament-tough with a long string of matches.
She is coming off a first-round loss last week in San Diego, her first match since injuring her left ankle in the second round of a tournament in Slovenia in the middle of last month.
“My ankle’s OK,” said Jankovic, who also had to retire from her fourth-round match at Wimbledon with lower back problems. “I’ve been able to practice the last couple of days. Now, it’s feeling good. I’m looking forward to getting back to playing.”
■ROGERS CUP
REUTERS, TORONTO
Canadian wildcard Peter Polansky provided the opening day fireworks at the Rogers Cup in Toronto on Monday with a 7-6, 6-4 upset over 13th-seeded Austrian Jurgen Melzer in front of an appreciative home crowd.
With the opening night fireworks display delayed because of overcast conditions, it was up to the 22-year-old Polansky to deliver the excitement before handing center court over to Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic for a doubles match.
Polansky, ranked 207, delivered and became the first Canadian to beat a top-15 opponent on home court since 2003 when Simon Larose stunned Gustavo Kuerten.
“I had some good practice against top guys so I came out here today really believing I could beat this guy and that’s what I did,” Polansky told reporters. “I’m just so happy the way I played. I stayed focused the whole match.”
Growing up near the tournament’s center court, there was no shortage of support for Polansky as he recorded just his second career ATP Tour win.
However, it was another letdown for Melzer as the loss marked the fourth consecutive time he has exited the tournament in the first round.
Russian 12th-seed Mikhail Youzhny survived two lengthy rain delays and a traffic jam to outlast Frenchman Gilles Simon and advance with a 6-4, 6-4 victory.
The early match at the tournament began 30 minutes late with Simon caught in traffic and it finished almost eight hours later after rain twice interrupted play.
Down a set but up 4-1 in the second when rain halted play a second time for five hours, Simon returned to the court and lost five straight games to end a dreary afternoon.
It was a bad day all around for the French contingent as Richard Gasquet, a former finalist in Canada, joined Simon at the exit after a 7-5, 6-1 loss to Ukraine’s Sergiy Stakhovsky.
Argentina’s Juan Ignacio Chela advanced with tidy 6-0, 6-3 win over Colombian Alejandro Falla and earned a second-round meeting with world No. 3 and twice Canadian champion Roger Federer of Switzerland.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
Rafael Nadal on Wednesday said the upcoming French Open would be the moment to “give everything and die” on the court after his comeback from injury in Barcelona was curtailed by Alex de Minaur. The 22-time Grand Slam title winner, back playing this week after three months on the sidelines, battled well, but eventually crumbled 7-5, 6-1 against the world No. 11 from Australia in the second round. Nadal, 37, who missed virtually all of last season, is hoping to compete at the French Open next month where he is the record 14-time champion. The Spaniard said the clash with De Minaur was
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but