Roger Federer staked his claim as one of the favorites for the Australian Open title later this month by romping into the second round of the Qatar Open, while rival Rafael Nadal survived a scare in windswept Doha on Tuesday.
Federer, hoping to win a record 17th Grand Slam in Melbourne later this month, thumped Russia’s Nikolay Davydenko 6-2, 6-2 in less than hour on a blustery evening.
Top seed Nadal, in contrast, battled back from a break down in the deciding set against Germany’s Philipp Kohlschreiber to triumph 6-3, 6-7 (2/7), 6-3. Third seed Jo-Wilfried Tsonga was also wayward in a 7-6 (7/5), 6-7 (5/7), 6-1 win over Tunisian wild-card Malek Jaziri.
Photo: Reuters
Federer said he was glad to get some nighttime match practice.
“It was a combination of me playing really well and Nikolay not finding his range, like we’re used to seeing in the past,” Federer told reporters. “This is obviously an important step to get used to the conditions.”
The 30-year-old Swiss has failed to win a Grand Slam title since lifting the 2010 Australian Open trophy, but his appetite for tennis remains undimmed.
Photo: EPA
“If you don’t have that [motivation], you will have many losses due to a lack of interest,” Federer said. “Your mindset has to be right and there’s a lot of sacrifice during the year, and throughout your career, but you get the returns and you just have to remind yourself how lucky you are.”
His longtime rival Nadal, who lost the Wimbledon and US Open finals as well as the world No. 1 spot to Novak Djokovic last year, said he was pleased with his performance in Doha as he recovers from a shoulder injury and switches to a new racket.
“The only moments I didn’t play well were the beginning of the second and after the tiebreak. For the rest, I think I played a very solid match,” Nadal said. “My shoulder is fine. I felt something at the beginning of practice, but later, after three, four minutes, when I got warmed up, I feel the shoulder with perfect condition.”
Nadal was in imperious form early on, sealing the first set by ending a furious exchange at the net with a simple volley winner.
The German appeared to be heading for his eighth successive defeat to Nadal, but he stunned the 10-time Grand Slam champion by racing into a 3-0 lead in the second set.
At 4-2 up, Kohlschreiber netted a backhand to give Nadal a break back.
The relentless power of Nadal’s shots left Kohlschreiber scrambling, but he clung on to take the set into a tiebreak, which the German won 7-2.
Kohlschreiber broke in the first game of the final set, hammering a forehand winner down the line, but that stirred Nadal from his slumber and the Spaniard broke back immediately, before surging into a 4-1 lead that he never looked like relinquishing.
Tsonga traded tiebreaks with the bulky Jaziri in the opening two sets of an error-riddled match.
The Frenchman then broke early in the final set and eased home as his Tunisian opponent tired.
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