Taiwan’s Lu Yen-hsun was defeated by rising US star Ryan Harrison 6-3, 3-6, 4-6 in the quarter-finals at the Farmers Classic in Los Angeles on Friday.
This prevents him from going through to the next round, which would have been his first time to reach the semi-finals at an ATP tournament.
Lu, 27, had a smooth start over his 19-year-old opponent, ranked 94th in the world, whom he took down 6-3 in the first set.
Photo: AFP
However, Lu, ranked 76th in the world, began making mistakes in the following sets. He made three double-faults and wasted several chances to break service in the second set.
Unlike Lu, Harrison found his attacking pace in this set, where he hit four aces to take down Lu with a score of 3-6. In the final set, Lu tied with Harrison 3-3 before making faults again.
He lost 4-6. The fierce match lasted 144 minutes.
During the match, Lu had two aces and six double-faults while Harrison hit eight aces and made four double-faults. It was the second time that Lu was stopped from advancing to the semi-finals of an ATP tournament after his defeat in Atlanta last week. Next on Lu’s schedule is playing the doubles semi-finals with partner Frank Moser of Germany.
Mardy Fish moved a step closer to his second straight title, beating No. 8 seed Igor Kunitsyn of Russia 6-2, 6-4 to reach the semi-finals.
Fish is the only remaining seeded player in the tournament, after No. 2 Juan Martin del Potro — the 2008 champion — was ousted by Latvian Ernests Gulbis 6-2, 6-4.
Gulbis’ semi-final opponent will be American Alex Bogomolov Jr, who beat fourth-seeded Brazilian Thomaz Bellucci 1-6, 6-4, 6-1.
Harrison became the first US teenager to reach back-to-back semi-finals since Andy Roddick in 2002. Fish beat Harrison in the semi-finals at Atlanta last week on his way to his first title of the season.
“Winning two tournaments in a row is not easy. Not everyone does that,” Fish said.
“That would be special. But it’s a long ways away,” he said.
First, Fish must get past the up-and-coming Harrison, who has been anointed by some as the next US star.
CROATIA OPEN
AP, UMAG, CROATIA
Fourth-seeded Croat Marin Cilic defeated Italy’s Andreas Seppi on Friday to reach the semi-finals of the Croatia Open.
Cilic cruised to victory, beating the seventh-seeded Seppi 6-1, 6-3 in just 72 minutes. He faced only one break point, winning 24 out of 29 points played on the first serve.
“I played a great match,” he said. “I had to work for every single point, especially in the second set. I knew I had to stay focused, I did not want to give him any chance to come back.”
Seppi, who had reached the semi-finals for the past two years, could not counter Cilic.
“I could not make any pressure on him, could not hit winners,” Seppi said. “It was very difficult for me, he was better than me today.”
Cilic will next face another Italian, sixth-seeded Fabio Fognini, who rallied from one set down to defeat last year’s finalist Potito Starace 3-6, 6-3, 6-1.
Also on Friday, second-seeded Alexandr Dolgopolov recorded another straight-set victory, defeating Spaniard Albert Ramos 6-3, 7-5.
Dolgopolov next plays another Spaniard, Juan Carlos Ferrero, who defeated Argentina’s Carlos Berlocq 6-1, 7-6 (7/5).
SWISS OPEN
AP, GSTAAD, SWITZERLAND
Top-seeded Nicolas Almagro of Spain put in a double shift at the Swiss Open on Friday, advancing to the semi-finals after beating Jarkko Nieminen and Feliciano Lopez.
Almagro rounded off the action at Roy Emerson Arena against fifth-seeded Lopez, defeating his compatriot 6-4, 7-5 with the only breaks of serve in the match to clinch each set.
The 10th-ranked Almagro had opened play by resuming a rain-delayed second-round match with Finland’s Nieminen.
Almagro, who trailed 3-2 in the first set overnight, completed a 7-6 (7/3), 6-3 victory within an hour to book a double-duty return against Lopez.
In yesterday’s semifinals, Almagro was scheduled to play No. 4 seed Fernando Verdasco of Spain, who beat Frenchman Julien Benneteau 6-4, 5-7, 6-1 in Friday’s quarter-finals.
Second-seeded Stanislas Wa-wrinka disappointed the Gstaad crowd by losing 6-3, 6-2 to eighth-seeded Marcel Granollers of Spain.
Taiwanese world No. 1 women’s doubles star Hsieh Su-wei on Saturday overcame a first-set loss to win her opening match at the Madrid Open. Top seeds Hsieh and partner Elise Mertens of Belgium, with whom she last month won her fourth Indian Wells women’s doubles title, bounced back from a rocky first set to beat Asia Muhammad of the US and Aldila Sutjiadi of Indonesia 2-6, 6-4, 10-2. Hsieh and Mertens were next to face Heather Watson of the UK and Xu Yifan of China in the round of 16. Thirty-eight-year-old Hsieh last month reclaimed her world No. 1 spot after her Indian
EYES ON THE PRIZE: Armed with three solid men’s singles shuttlers and doubles Olympic champions, Taiwan aim to make their first Thomas Cup semi-final, Chou Tien-chen said Taiwanese badminton star Tai Tzu-ying yesterday quickly dispatched Malaysia’s Goh Jin Wei in straight sets, while her male counterpart Chou Tien-chen beat Germany’s Kai Schaefer, as Taiwan’s women’s and men’s teams won their Group B opening rounds of the TotalEnergies BWF Thomas and Uber Cup Finals in Chengdu, China. World No. 5 Tai beat Goh 21-19, 22-20 in a speedy 33 minutes, her fourth straight victory over the world No. 24 shuttler since they first faced each other in the quarter-finals of the 2018 Malaysia Open, where Tai went on to win the women’s singles title. Malaysia followed up Tai’s opening victory
Chen Yi-tung (陳奕通) secured a historic Olympic berth on Sunday by winning the senior men’s foil event at the 2024 Asia Oceania Zonal Olympic Fencing Qualifiers in United Arab Emirates. Chen defeated Samuel Elijah of Singapore 15-4 in the final in Dubai to secure the only wild card in the event, making him the first male Olympian fencer from Taiwan in 36 years and only the sixth Taiwanese fencer to ever qualify for the quadrennial event. The last appearance by a Taiwanese male fencer at the Olympics was in 1988, when Wang San-tsai (王三財) and Cheng Ming-hsiang (鄭明祥) competed in Seoul. The
A soccer jersey carrying a national map including disputed Western Sahara has become a hot commodity in Morocco after a diplomatic dispute with Algeria. Retailers said RS Berkane jerseys have been flying off the shelves after a Confederation of African Football (CAF) Cup match against Algerian club USM Alger was canceled last month over the jerseys. “We are overwhelmed by the influx of messages and requests,” said Brahim Rabii, representative of the official RS Berkane jersey distributor. Algeria broke off diplomatic relations with Morocco in 2021, partly over the issue of Western Sahara. The former Spanish colony is largely controlled by Morocco, but claimed