Andy Roddick reached his second quarter-final of the year with a 6-4, 7-5 victory over Denis Istomin of Uzbekistan at the Delray Beach International Tennis Championship on Thursday.
Roddick avenged his loss to Istomin — in his other quarter-final appearance this year — at last month’s San Jose tournament.
Roddick is currently ranked No. 30, which is the lowest he has been since he held that same ranking in 2001. He has been dealing with hamstring and ankle problems this year and he is struggling to find a range with his game.
Photo: Reuters
Roddick only got half his first serves in against the 51st-ranked Istomin.
“I’m feeling better than I did a couple of matches ago,” Roddick said. “I served horrendously and still won, and was still able to break serve.”
In the second set, Istomin led the penultimate game 40-15, but then made four consecutive unforced errors to hand Roddick the service break.
Photo: EPA
Roddick eventually managed to serve out the match in the next game, but only after seeing off three break points and needing two match points.
“I got it done in the end,” Roddick said. “You want to close. The misses I had were positive misses because they were played on my terms. That was a big step.”
Roddick is scheduled to play seventh seed Kevin Anderson of South Africa in the quarter-finals after Anderson topped Xavier Malisse of Belgium 6-3, 3-6, 6-3.
The 2.01m Anderson had nine aces and won 77 percent of his first-serve points, although his first-serve percentage was only 55 percent.
“I thought it really gusty, really windy, and it wasn’t easy to get a good rhythm,” Anderson said. “It was tough for both of us because we couldn’t play the kind of tennis we wanted to play.”
Malisse was a two-time former Delray Beach champion (2005 and 2007) and he went into the match with a 25-9 record at the tournament. He did well when his forehand was kicking in, but otherwise struggled.
Fifth seed Philipp Kohlschreiber of Germany also advanced to the quarter-finals, defeating 57th-ranked Ivan Dodig of Croatia 6-2, 6-2.
Kohlschreiber saved both break points he faced on serve and took advantage of four of 10 break point opportunities he had on Dodig’s serve.
Kohlschreiber broke serve in the fifth and seventh games of the first set and the third and seventh games of the second set. He is 12-5 this year after reaching the semi-finals in Auckland, New Zealand, and Montpellier, France.
The German’s quarter-final opponent is Dudi Sela of Israel, who earned his spot with a 6-4, 6-4 win over Jarkko Nieminen of Finland.
Sela, who also reached the quarter-finals in Chennai, India, this season, won 25 of the 30 points when his first serve went into play.
“It was difficult conditions because the wind was swirling,” said Sela, who said the weather is similar to what he is used to in Israel. “It was tough to serve and you had to put your first serves in. I think I served very well and I didn’t give him any presents.”
MEXICAN OPEN
AP, ACAPULCO, Mexico
David Ferrer took a large stride toward back-to-back Mexican Open titles by winning his quarter-final on Thursday, while his main rival and Spanish compatriot Nicolas Almagro lost.
Top seed Ferrer cruised past another Spaniard, Pablo Andujar, 6-2, 6-4, while the other all-Spanish quarter-final saw Almagro beaten 6-4, 7-6 (7/5) by No. 8 Fernando Verdasco.
Verdasco was trailing 4-1 in the second-set tiebreaker, but won six of the last seven points to close out the match against the second-seeded Almagro at the Fairmont Acapulco Princess.
Almagro broke Verdasco when he was serving for the match at 5-4, but the tiebreaker collapse kept him from reaching his second consecutive final in Mexico and a fourth in the past five years.
He was runner-up to Ferrer last year and won the competition in 2008 and 2009. Ranked 12th in the world, Almagro also won the Brazil Open two weeks ago.
Ferrer’s semi-final opponent is Colombia’s Santiago Giraldo, who was a 7-5, 3-6, 6-4 winner over Argentina’s Carlos Berlocq.
Verdasco is scheduled to face Stanislas Wawrinka of Switzerland, who advanced by beating Jeremy Chardy of France 7-5, 6-1.
In the women’s quarter-finals, the three top-ranked Italian players all comfortably progressed to the final four.
Top seed Roberta Vinci of Italy routed Michaella Krajicek of the Netherlands 6-2, 6-0 and she is set to play her semi-final against fellow Italian Sara Errani, the No. 3 seed, who ousted seventh seed Estrella Cabeza Candela of Spain 6-4, 6-3.
Second seed Flavia Pennetta of Italy beat Colombia’s Mariana Duque-Marino 6-0, 6-4 and she is scheduled to face Romania’s Irina-Camelia Begu, who won 6-2, 6-2 over Slovakia’s Magdalena Rybarikova.
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
Rafael Nadal on Wednesday said the upcoming French Open would be the moment to “give everything and die” on the court after his comeback from injury in Barcelona was curtailed by Alex de Minaur. The 22-time Grand Slam title winner, back playing this week after three months on the sidelines, battled well, but eventually crumbled 7-5, 6-1 against the world No. 11 from Australia in the second round. Nadal, 37, who missed virtually all of last season, is hoping to compete at the French Open next month where he is the record 14-time champion. The Spaniard said the clash with De Minaur was
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