Maria Jose Martinez Sanchez defeated Austrian wild-card Patricia Mayr-Archleitner 6-0, 7-5 in the final of the Gastein Ladies on Sunday to win her fourth career title.
The 54th-ranked Spaniard is now 4-1 in finals after also winning in Bogota and Bastad in 2009 and Rome last year. All her victories have been on clay.
“It’s a really good step for me to play a lot of matches in the same week and build my confidence,” Martinez Sanchez said. “At the start, I was playing almost 100 percent perfectly. It’s normal to have a bit of difficulty after such a good start, but I stayed calm all the time until the end, and that’s why I won.”
The 109th-ranked Mayr-Archleitner, who trashed the 8th-seeded Ksenia Pervak 6-0, 6-0 on Saturday to reach her first career WTA Tour final, won just four points on serve and nine in total in the opening set.
The 28-year-old Martinez Sanchez, playing her first final this season, had nine aces and won the first seven games. However, she found herself 4-1 down in the second after dropping serve twice.
She saved six more break points to win six of the next seven games as her opponent seemed to struggle with the strong winds, which hampered her throw at serving.
Reaching the final means Mayr-Archleitner, who was a career-high 70th two years ago, returned to the top 100 when the rankings were updated yesterday.
PALERMO OPEN
AP, PALERMO, SICILY
Anabel Medina Garrigues defeated Polona Hercog of Slovenia 6-3, 6-2 on Sunday to win the Palermo Open for the fifth time.
It was the Spaniard’s 11th career title and her second of the season after winning in April at Estoril, Portugal. It was also her 10th title on clay. She now holds the record for most wins on the surface among active players, overtaking Venus Williams, who has nine.
The fifth-seeded Medina Garrigues improved to 32-3 at the event after also winning in 2001 and from 2004 until 2006.
The loss ended a nine-match winning streak for the seventh-seeded Hercog, who won her maiden title in Sweden last week.
Victoria Azarenka remains the only player this season to win back-to-back WTA titles, after triumphing in Miami and Marbella in March and April.
Medina Garrigues broke Hercog’s serve twice to lead 3-0 in the opening set, closing it out on another break.
The Slovenian lost her serve again early in the second set. Media Garrigues closed out the win when Hercog sent a backhand volley into the net.
A sumo star was born in Japan on Sunday when 24-year-old Takerufuji became the first wrestler in 110 years to win a top-division tournament on his debut, triumphing at the 15-day Spring Grand Sumo Tournament in Osaka despite injuring his ankle on the penultimate day. Takerufuji, whose injury had left him in a wheelchair outside the ring, shoved out the higher-ranked Gonoyama at the Edion Arena Osaka to the delight of the crowd, giving him an unassailable record of 13 wins and two losses to claim the Emperor’s Cup. “I did it just through willpower. I didn’t really know what was going
The US’ Ilia Malinin on Saturday produced six scintillating quadruple jumps, including a quadruple Axel, in the men’s free skate to capture his first figure skating world title. The 19-year-old nicknamed the “Quad god,” who is the only skater to land a quadruple Axel in competition, dazzled with an array of breathtakingly executed jumps starting with his quad Axel and including a quadruple Lutz in combination with a triple flip and a quadruple toe loop in combination with a triple toe. He added an unexpected triple-triple combination at the end to earn a world-record 227.79 in the free program for a championship
Shohei Ohtani’s interpreter is being criminally investigated by the IRS, and the attorney for his alleged bookmaker said Thursday that the ex-Los Angeles Dodgers employee placed bets on international soccer — but not baseball. The IRS confirmed Thursday that interpreter Ippei Mizuhara and Mathew Bowyer, the alleged illegal bookmaker, are under criminal investigation through the agency’s Los Angeles Field Office. IRS Criminal Investigation spokesperson Scott Villiard said he could not provide additional details. Mizuhara, 39, was fired by the Dodgers on Wednesday following reports from the Los Angeles Times and ESPN about his alleged ties to an illegal bookmaker and debts well
MLB on Friday announced a formal investigation into the scandal swirling around Shohei Ohtani and his former interpreter amid charges that the Los Angeles Dodgers superstar was the victim of “massive theft.” The Dodgers on Wednesday fired Ippei Mizuhara, Ohtani’s long-time interpreter and close friend, after Ohtani’s representatives alleged that the Japanese two-way star had been the victim of theft, which was reported to involve millions of dollars and link Mizuhara to a suspected illegal bookmaker in California. “Major League Baseball has been gathering information since we learned about the allegations involving Shohei Ohtani and Ippei Mizuhara from the news media,” MLB