Eighth-seeded Andreas Seppi of Italy rallied to beat Igor Andreev 2-6, 6-3, 7-6 (7/4), while his fellow Italian Roberta Vinci, seeded seventh, was upset by Vera Dushevina in the first round of the Kremlin Cup on Monday.
Andreev, who won his hometown event in 2005, broke twice to win the first set. However, Seppi, ranked 53rd, made one break in the second set and one more early in the third to serve for the match at 1-1 and 5-4 up, but the Russian broke back to force a tiebreaker.
Andreev, who reached a career high ranking of 18 in 2008, suffers from pain in his knees and has dropped to No. 115 this season. He will decide his future in tennis after a checkup in Germany later this year.
Photo: EPA
“You cannot beat anyone playing on one leg,” he said.
Andreev hasn’t reached a -quarter-final this season.
Dushevina rallied from 4-0 down in the first set and from 4-2 down in the second, winning four consecutive games to wrap up the match.
Also in the women’s first round, Kaia Kanepi of Estonia defeated Italy’s Sara Errani 6-0, 7-5 on her debut at the tournament, while Nadia Petrova beat fellow Russian wild card Evgeniya Rodina 6-4, 7-6 (7/3). Serbia’s Bojana Jovanovski ousted Alona Bondarenko of Ukraine 6-3, 6-0.
In the men’s opener, Teymuraz Gabashvili of Russia advanced to the second round with a 6-2, 6-4 victory over Karol Beck of Slovakia.
Elsewhere, Pere Riba of Spain ousted Andreas Haider-Maurer of Austria, 6-2, 6-7 (1/7), 6-3, while Mikhail Kukushkin of Kazakhstan beat Lukas Rosol of the Czech Republic 7-6 (7/5), 7-5.
Igor Kunitsyn of Russia beat compatriot Andrey Kuznetsov 7-5, 4-6, 6-3.
Janko Tipsarevic, runner-up in 2009, heads the men’s draw of the 22nd edition of the event. Vera Zvonareva, who won in 2008, tops the women’s field.
STOCKHOLM OPEN
AFP, STOCKHOLM
Veteran Tommy Haas returned to the courts for the first time since the US Open and beat Somdev Devvarman of India 7-6 (7/4), 6-4 to reach the second round of the Stockholm Open on Monday.
The 33-year-old two-time semi-finalist at the Kungligahallen from 2004 and 2007 missed more than a year of play from February last year until May as he recovered from hip surgery. The comeback for the No. 290 has been limited, with Haas winning only five matches this season prior to his Stockholm success.
He was joined as an opening-day winner by compatriot Philipp Petzschner, who beat Lukasz Kubot of Poland 6-2, 7-5.
Haas, who struck 37 winners in the contest that lasted for nearly 90 minutes, fired seven aces and committed 20 unforced errors, said he was pleased to be tested by Johannesburg finalist Devvarman.
Haas won the opening set in a tiebreaker as he produced a service winner on the first of three set points. The veteran began the second set with a break of the Indian and took a 4-2 lead on his sixth ace.
However, Devvarman broke back in the eighth game for 4-all only to lose his serve again to Haas, 4-5. The wild card German served out the victory on the first of his three chances a game later.
Haas is playing in Stockholm for the sixth time, with his last appearance a 2009 loss in the second round to Jarkko Niemimen.
Frenchman Gael Monfils, given the all-clear by doctors in Paris to play after a recent knee scan, arrived in the Swedish capital on Monday night, with the top seed given a bye into the second round before meeting either Estonian qualifier Jurgen Zopp or Australian wild card Bernard Tomic.
Argentine Juan Martin del Potro is seeded second as the South American begins the autumn indoor season after skipping the just-concluded Asian swing, dominated by Andy Murray.
LUXEMBOURG OPEN
AP, LUXEMBOURG
Seventh-seeded Maria Kirilenko of Russia advanced to the second round of the Luxembourg Open on Monday when Carla Suarez Navarro of Spain retired with an injury when trailing 7-6 (7/5), 3-6, 3-0.
Kirilenko will now meet Iveta Benesova for a place in the quarter-finals after the Czech player rallied to beat Pauline Parmentier of France 3-6, 6-3, 6-2.
In other first-round action, Tamira Paszek of Austria defeated Ekaterina Makarova of Russia 6-2, 6-2, and Spain’s Anabel Medina Garrigues swept past local wild card Anne Kremer 6-0, 6-0.
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