Roger Federer rallied from a set down to beat Robin Soderling 6-7 (3/7), 6-3, 6-3 on Friday and set up a meeting with Rafael Nadal in the final of the Mubadala World Tennis Championships in Abu Dhabi.
The top-ranked Nadal beat Tomas Berdych 6-4, 6-4 in the other semi-final.
Federer, who lost to the fifth-ranked Swede in the exhibition tournament last year, struggled with his serve in the first set and had to save several break points early on. He then made several unforced errors in the tiebreaker, handing Soderling the lead when he hit a forehand long on set point.
Photo: AFP
However, the No. 2-ranked Swiss took control in the second set, breaking Soderling twice with the help of his powerful forehand.
Trailing 5-3, Soderling double faulted to give Federer a set point and the Swede then sent a shot that bounced on the net cord and out to even the match.
In the third set, Federer broke for a 5-3 lead when Soderling missed an easy forehand, before closing out the match with an ace.
Soderling said he wasn’t able to “get into my rhythm at all.”
“It was a tough match, like always against Roger,” Soderling said. “He played really fast, but overall it was a pretty good match. Maybe I did not serve well in the last two sets.”
Nadal struggled against the sixth-ranked Berdych’s serve at the start, before breaking for a 5-4 lead with a forehand into the corner. He clinched the set with another forehand winner.
Nadal, the defending champion, jumped out to a 4-1 lead in the second, breaking Berdych twice before the 25-year-old Czech took the next two games to make it 4-3. However, Berdych’s comeback fell short and Nadal closed out the match with a forehand that the Czech returned into the net.
HOPMAN CUP
AfP, PERTH, Australia
Former world No. 1 Justine Henin made a winning start in her latest comeback yesterday, but the Belgian could not prevent her team losing to Australia at the mixed-teams Hopman Cup.
In her first match since suffering a serious elbow injury when losing to compatriot Kim Clijsters at Wimbledon last June, the world No. 12 was too good for the 129th-ranked Alicia Molik, winning their women’s singles match 6-4, 6-4.
The result gave Belgium a 1-0 lead in the tournament’s opening Group A tie, but local favorite Lleyton Hewitt, in his first match since September, leveled the clash with a 6-4, 6-3 win over the 178th-ranked Ruben Bemelmans.
The Australians then clinched the tie in a match tiebreak in the mixed doubles, winning 1-6, 6-3, 7-6 (10/8).
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
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
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier