Top-seeded American Mardy Fish shook off a sluggish start to beat Gilles Muller 7-6 (7/1), 6-1 on Thursday and reach the quarter-finals of the US$619,500 ATP Los Angeles hardcourt tournament.
Fish, ranked world No. 9, was playing his first match since winning his sixth career title with a victory over John Isner in the Atlanta final on Sunday.
“I came out a tad flat,” said Fish, who dropped his serve in the second game and said his ability to immediately break back was key.
Photo: AFP
The first set went with serve from there, and Fish built momentum heading into the tiebreaker when he closed out the 12th game with two straight aces.
Once he had sped through the tiebreaker, Muller offered little resistance.
“He’s a guy that plays very well ahead, or equal,” Fish said. “Getting up a set, I knew he was going to be upset after playing a pretty good first set and losing it.”
In the second set, Fish took a 3-0 lead then broke Muller for a 5-1 lead, advancing in the next game on his second match point when Muller sent a forehand wide.
In yesterday’s quarter-finals Fish was to face eighth-seeded Igor Kunitsyn of Russia.
Kunitsyn defeated tenacious American Ryan Sweeting 7-6 (7/4), 7-6 (8/6).
After Sweeting saved one match point in the tiebreaker, Kunitsyn set up another with an angled forehand volley for 7-6, sealing the victory just as the match clock ticked past two hours.
Fourth seed Brazilian Thomaz Bellucci roared into the quarter-finals by downing Colombia’s Alejandro Falla 6-0, 6-1 in 51 minutes.
Like Fish, Bellucci enjoyed a first-round bye, but the 34th-ranked Brazilian wasted no time, winning the opening set of the second-round match in 28 minutes.
Falla won the first game of the second set, but Bellucci then re-asserted himself to wrap up the contest between two South American left-handers who are playing doubles together here.
Bellucci next faces American Alex Bogomolov, who upset seventh-seeded Bulgarian Grigor Dimitrov of Bulgaria 6-4, 6-3.
Yesterday’s other two quarter-finals were set on Wednesday.Second-seeded Argentinian Juan Martin del Potro was to take on Latvia’s Ernests Gulbis and 19-year-old American Ryan Harrison was to play Taiwan’s Lu Yen-hsun.
Del Potro, the 2009 US Open champion, won the title in Los Angeles in 2008.
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