Novak Djokovic’s reign as world No. 1 remained unblemished as the Serb blasted Frenchman Gael Monfils 6-2, 6-1 off the court to ease into the semi-finals of the ATP Rogers Cup in Montreal on Friday.
Djokovic’s win extended his season record to a spectacular 51-1 and leaves him on course to become the first to win a title on debut as the world’s top-ranked player since Pete Sampras in 1993.
It has also set the scene for an intriguing showdown with another Frenchman in Jo Wilfried Tsonga, who earlier delighted the center court crowd with his 6-4, 6-4 win over eighth-seeded Spaniard Nicolas Almagro.
Photo: AFP
“I have played the best match of the tournament, no doubt,” Djokovic, who has not dropped a set at the event, told reporters. “I played really, really fast and tried to constantly put pressure on Gael because I didn’t want to give him any time to get back to the match or to think about what he’s going to play. Overall performance was fantastic.”
The other semi-final will see American Mardy Fish take on Serbia’s Janko Tipsarevic.
Fish finished strongly to beat Switzerland’s Stanislas Wawrinka 6-3, 6-7 (6/8), 6-0, while Tipsarevic booked his spot with an upset win over seventh-seeded Czech Tomas Berdych 6-4, 6-4.
Photo: Reuters
Djokovic came into his meeting boasting a 6-0 record over Monfils and quickly gained the upper hand. He broke the wiry Frenchman to lead 4-2 and finished off the set with another break before surging to 5-0 in the second.
“He was certainly the best Novak I ever met,” said Monfils, who was dispatched in a tidy 73 minutes. “Today he was too strong. I played well, I hit the ball hard, but I never had any solution to finish off a point. I was hitting beautiful rallies, but at the end of those long rallies, he was always hitting the winner.”
The powerfully built Tsonga, who has been in superb form and upset two-time champion Roger Federer in the third round, was never threatened by Almagro and celebrated his victory over the frustrated Spaniard with a leaping pirouette.
Fish, who had failed to win a match in two previous appearances in Montreal, had a tougher ride and was far from dominant in an error-strewn match that failed to produce the best in either player.
Fish broke Wawrinka three times to grab the opening set, but neither could player land their serve in an ugly second set featuring eight service breaks — four by each player.
Wawrinka battled to forced the match to a decider after taking the tiebreak 10-8, but promptly fell flat as Fish steamrolled his way to the win.
“The second set was very strange for both of us,” Fish said. “We couldn’t hold serve to save our lives, but we returned really well ... There’s the positive, I guess.”
WOMEN’S SINGLES
REUTERS, TORONTO
A battle-tested Serena Williams booked her spot in the semi-finals of the WTA Rogers Cup in Toronto on Friday after overcoming a sluggish start to grind out a 4-6, 6-3, 6-2 win over Czech Lucie Safarova.
Williams, whose 11-month layoff with injury and health problems ended in June, was a shadow of herself in the first set, but rallied with raw power and shot-making to wrap up the match without losing serve in the last two sets.
“I could have had a better chance in the first set, but I lost some key points,” Williams, who won the Stanford Classic last month and is on a nine-match winning streak, told reporters. “It was all about maybe one or two points here that would’ve made a difference and some silly double faults that didn’t make sense.”
The third set went with serve until Williams broke world No. 32 Safarova in an intense fifth game in which she unleashed several loud screams to get herself going.
The vocal strategy seemed to pay off as she wrapped up the match without conceding another game.
The former world No. 1, unseeded here because of her long layoff, faces her toughest test yet against Belarus’ Victoria Azarenka, who has not lost a set en route to the semi-finals and is the highest seeded player left in the draw.
Azarenka ended Kazakh qualifier Galina Voskoboeva’s surprise run with a clinical 6-1, 6-2 victory.
On the other side of the draw, 10th-seed Samantha Stosur booked her ticket to the semi-finals with a fuss-free 6-4, 6-1 win over Italy’s Roberta Vinci in their first meeting.
The 27-year-old Australian, who dropped out of the top 10 this week for the first time in more than a year, fired five aces and held serve throughout the match to overpower the Italian, who relied on backhand slice and moving the ball around the court.
“I knew going into the match that she obviously has a different style, and you know, I kind of thought I knew the way she was was gonna try and play against me and I was prepared for that,” said Stosur, her country’s top-ranked player.
The Australian will meet in-form Pole Agnieszka Radwanska for a place in the final. Radwanska won in San Diego last week and extended her winning streak to nine with a 6-4, 6-3 win over German Andrea Petkovic.
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