Agnieszka Radwanska broke into the world’s top five for the first time after beating Germany’s Julia Goerges 7-5, 6-4 in the final of the Dubai Championships on Saturday.
The 22-year-old Pole will move up to fifth in the world rankings when the new standings are released today after claiming her eighth WTA singles title.
Trailing 5-4 in the first set, Radwanska won seven of the next eight games to go a set and 4-1 up in the second, ultimately sealing a comfortable win.
Goerges broke back in the eighth game to make it 4-4, but serving at 5-5, her aggressive approach backfired.
She had four chances to serve out the game, but fluffed them all to give the dogged Radwanska a break point, which the Pole converted when Goerges took on a volley mid-court and blasted it wide when she could have let it bounce first.
Radwanska served out to take the first set 7-5 and moved ahead in the second as her opponent’s errors piled up. Goerges provided some late resistance when she clawed back one break of serve and then had a point to make it 5-5 when Radwanska served for the match.
Unfortunately for her, she just missed a forehand and Radwanska sealed victory on her second match point when her opponent shanked a backhand.
MONTERREY OPEN
AP, MONTERREY, MEXICO
Romania’s Alexandra Cadantu and Hungary’s Timea Babos advanced to their first WTA career final after semi-final victories at the Monterrey Open on Saturday.
Cadantu defeated Hungary’s Greta Arn 6-2, 4-6, 7-5, after Timea Babos had defeated the second-seed Sara Errani of Italy 6-4, 6-7 (3), 6-4 in almost two-and-a-half hours in the first semi-final at the Sierra Madre Tennis Club.
After trading the first two sets, Cadantu made the decisive break in the 11th game of the third set and held her nerve on her next service game to advance to yesterday’s final.
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