French seventh seed Marion Bartoli stunned previously unbeaten world No. 1 Victoria Azarenka 6-3, 6-3 to reach the semi-finals of the Sony Ericsson Open hardcourt tournament on Wednesday.
It was the second consecutive dominating victory in Miami for Bartoli, who brushed aside 22nd seed Maria Kirilenko in the fourth round 6-1, 6-2.
Bartoli ended defending champion Azarenka’s season-long win streak at 26 matches by posting her third win over a world No. 1 and first in three years.
Photo: EPA
“I really went on court with a lot of belief in myself, and I stayed very focused at the end,” Bartoli said. “I’m so happy.”
Bartoli previously beat former No. 1s Justin Henin of Belgium in 2007 at Wimbledon and Jelena Jankovic two years later at the Australian Open.
Bartoli finished with two aces, five double faults and won 68 percent of her first-serve points against Azarenka in the 97-minute match.
Azarenka had five double faults and won just 49 percent of her first-serve points as she tried, but failed, to play catchup for the second straight match.
In her fourth-round match, Azarenka dropped the first set and then fell behind 5-2 in the second set against Dominika Cibulkova, before fighting back to win in three sets.
However, there would be no magical comeback this time as Bartoli used her counterpunching style to blunt Azarenka’s athletic baseline game.
Bartoli will next face Agnieszka Radwanska, who brought Venus Williams’ comeback to a halt on Wednesday, downing the American 6-4, 6-1.
The 23-year-old Radwanska from Poland reached the semi-finals in Miami for the first time, after getting to the quarter-finals each of the past two years.
She needed 1 hour, 21 minutes to overcome Williams, who was playing her first WTA tournament in more than six months after her abrupt withdrawal from the second round of the US Open, where she revealed she had been diagnosed with the autoimmune disorder Sjogren syndrome.
Williams said it was frustrating not to be able to execute all elements of her game as well as she would like.
“I think out of all the matches, today was probably the one where I had the least pressure in terms of someone who was going to maybe hit winners on me or pressure me. So it was disappointing not to be able to feel my best today,” she said.
Williams, 31, is hoping to raise her world ranking to allow her to compete at the London Olympics.
A runner who stopped during a marathon in China to pose doing the splits and another who hoarded energy gels have been banned for two years, the local athletics association said yesterday. The incidents happened during Sunday’s marathon in Sichuan Province’s Chengdu and were widely shared online. Videos showed a female runner stopping suddenly and dropping to the ground in the splits position, holding up her arms in a heart shape as she apparently posed for a photograph. She “committed obstructive fouls during the race, affecting the safe participation of other runners,” the Sichuan Athletics Association said in a statement, which identified
Liverpool star Mohamed Salah on Tuesday said that he would leave the English club at the end of the Premier League season, marking an earlier-than-planned departure for one of the club’s greatest-ever scorers and soccer’s biggest names. The 33-year-old Egypt forward, who has scored 255 goals in 435 appearances for Liverpool, “reached an agreement” to quit the team a year before his contract was due to expire, the Premier League champions said. Salah’s form has dipped in his ninth year at Anfield, to such an extent that he was dropped for a stretch of games late last year — leading to the
Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli yesterday vowed to “keep raising the bar” after winning the Japanese Grand Prix to become the youngest driver in Formula One history to lead the championship standings. The 19-year-old Italian took advantage of a mid-race safety car to jump into the lead after a dreadful start from pole position, crossing the line ahead of McLaren’s Oscar Piastri and Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc. Antonelli’s Suzuka victory came two weeks after the first grand prix win of his career in China, and sent him top of the championship standings after three races, nine points ahead of team-mate George Russell. Mercedes are struggling to
There were some big games to be played yesterday in the NBA, with the Atlanta Hawks to play the Detroit Pistons in a matchup pitting a Hawks team who are rolling against a Pistons team trying to lock up the Eastern Conference’s No. 1 seed. The Oklahoma City Thunder were to play the Boston Celtics, a showdown featuring the two most recent champions, while the Houston Rockets faced the Minnesota Timberwolves, a game that could factor mightily into Western Conference seeding. Elsewhere, the Washington Wizards were to play the Utah Jazz, with the Wizards on a 16-game slide visiting against a team
RSS