Five-time champion Rafael Nadal thrashed Spanish compatriot Daniel Gimeno-Traver 6-1, 6-1 on Wednesday as the top seeded king of clay returned victorious to the Barcelona Open.
Nadal took his record for the season to 25-4 just 72 hours after defeating compatriot David Ferrer for an historic seventh straight trophy in Monte Carlo.
The world No. 1 owns 30 titles on clay and is aiming to pick up where he left off in 2009 in Barcelona when he won his fifth on the trot at the Real Club de Tenis. That run was interrupted a year ago when he missed the tournament because of a knee injury.
Top-seed Nadal needed just 55 minutes to stroll into a third-round match against Colombian Santiago Giraldo, a winner against Albert Ramos 6-3, 4-6, 6-3. Nadal also took his career record in the -tennis-mad Catalan capital to 26 wins and just one loss.
“I played a good match,” Nadal said. “He had more mistakes than usual and I was able to take advantage. It’s great to be back in Barcelona after not being able to play last year.”
Last year’s losing finalist Robin Soderling was ambushed by 56th-ranked Croatian Ivan Dodig 6-2, 6-4 as the Swedish third seed failed in his first match of the season on clay after healing a knee injury last month. Ferrer began his Barcelona campaign with a victory, easing 6-2, 6-2 over Argentine Carlos Berlocq. Ferrer has reached the semi-finals or better in Barcelona in each of the last four years.
He has a solid 22-5 win-loss record for the season and will now face Victor Hanescu of Romania, who put South African 14th-seed Kevin Anderson out 6-4, 6-4.
A Spanish name from the past continued his injury comeback, with 2001 champion Juan Carlos Ferrero belying his 31 years by advancing into the third round with a 6-4, 7-5 defeat of Mischa Zverev.
The defeated German replaced Andy Murray in the draw after the British world No. 4 had to pull out because of the elbow injury he sustained in Monte Carlo last week.
Ferrero is playing for the first time since the US Open after undergoing wrist and knee surgery in October and expressed satisfaction with his fledgling form.
“I played better than yesterday, when I was starting to cramp at the end,” the former world No. 1 and 2003 French Open champion said. “Today I tried to be more aggressive, but the body is still feeling it.”
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