Santiago Giraldo of Colombia eliminated 13th-seeded Thomaz Bellucci of Brazil 7-5, 6-3 in the opening round of the Barcelona Open on Monday.
Giraldo saved two set points in the first set and four of five break points in the second. He will play Albert Ramos, who beat Ruben Ramirez Hidalgo 4-6, 7-6 (7/5), 7-5 in an all-Spanish match.
All other seeded players in action Monday advanced. No. 11 Albert Montanes of Spain beat Teymuraz Gabashvili of Russia 6-2, 6-2, and will play Benoit Paire after the French player rallied to oust Spain’s Pablo Carreno-Busta 6-7 (7/9), 6-3, 6-2.
No. 12 Guillermo Garcia-Lopez of Spain defeated Ukrainian player Denis Istomin 7-6 (8/6), 6-3, and 14th-seeded Kevin Anderson of South Africa beat Uruguay’s Pablo Cuevas 7-5, 3-6, 6-4.
Also, 16th-seeded Juan Monaco of Argentina routed Grigor Dimitrov of Bulgaria 6-4, 6-1, while Spanish player Marcel Granollers downed Germany’s Daniel Brands 7-5, 6-7 (5/7), 6-1.
Blaz Kavcic, Robin Haase, Victor Hanescu, and Fabio Fognini were other first-round winners.
GRAND PRIX SAR
AP, FEZ, MOROCCO
Simona Halep of Romania beat Anastasiya Yakimova of Belarus 6-2, 6-0 on Monday to reach the second round of the Grand Prix SAR.
The seventh-seeded Halep, who was runner-up last year, lost only 12 points on her serve and broke her opponent seven times. She next faces Alla Kudryavtseva of Russia.
Fourth-seeded Greta Arn of Hungary also advanced after Austria’s Patricia Mayr-Achleitner retired when trailing 6-0, 1-0. Arn is looking for her second title this season following her victory in Auckland in January.
However, fifth-seeded Angelique Kerber of Germany lost 6-1, 4-6, 6-3 to Russia’s Ksenia Pervak.
Kudryavtseva ralled to beat Nina Bratchikova 2-6, 6-2, 6-3 in an all-Russian match, despite dropping her own serve four times.
PORSCHE GRAND PRIX
AP, STUTTGART, GERMANY
Eighth-seeded Marion Bartoli of France beat Bulgaria’s Tsvetana Pironkova 6-4, 6-1 on Monday to advance to the second round of the Porsche Grand Prix tournament on indoor red clay.
Kristina Barrois, a wild-card entrant from Germany, defeated Lucie Safarova of the Czech Republic 6-1, 6-4 in another first-round match.
Top-ranked Caroline Wozniacki and the three other top-seeded players — Vera Zvonareva, Francesca Schiavone and Victoria Azarenka — all have byes into the second round.
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