Spain’s Nicolas Almagro got the perfect boost ahead of the French Open by ending the magical claycourt run of US qualifier Brian Baker 6-3, 6-2 to successfully defend his Nice Open title yesterday.
It was Almagro’s second tournament win of the year and the 12th of his career.
Baker, 27, was playing in his first ATP final after being sidelined for almost six years having undergone five surgeries (three hip, one elbow, one hernia) before returning to tennis in July last year at the Pittsburgh Futures.
Baker should rise to about 140 in the world from his current 216.
“It was a great week. Every time you go onto court, you want to win. I am a competitor, I hate losing,” Baker said.
“But it has been an unbelievable week. I hoped to qualify at the start of the week and win a match or two, before going to Roland Garros. Obviously, I did much better than that. I think even in the qualifying, I felt as if I was playing pretty well,” Baker said. “I won my three matches easily and knew I was playing good tennis.”
Almagro added: “Baker lost the final today, but he is back, he is playing very good. I think if he plays as he did this week, then he will win many, many tournaments.”
The Spaniard is seeded 12th for Roland Garros, which started yesterday. He opens against Italy’s Paolo Lorenzi.
Baker will play the French Open on a wildcard and takes on Belgium’s Xavier Malisse in the first round.
WORLD TEAM CUP
AP, DUESSELDORF, GERMANY
Serbia defeated the Czech Republic 3-0 on Saturday to win the World Team Cup for the second time.
Janko Tipsarevic and Viktor Troicki, who were both part of Serbia’s winning team in 2009, both won their singles matches to give their country an unassailable 2-0 lead in the three-match tournament at the Rochus Club.
The No. 8-ranked Tipsarevic pulled ahead first after defeating the No. 7-ranked Tomas Berdych 7-5, 7-6 (8).
“The match could have gone either way,” Tipsarevic said. “I was a little bit lucky.”
Troicki had a poor start against Radek Stepanek and lost the first. The Serb regrouped in the second to wrap up the match in two hours.
In the doubles match, that had no effect on the overall result, Tipsarevic teamed up with Nenad Zimonjic to complete Serbia’s dominance with a 6-3, 6-1 win over Berdych and Frantisek Cermak.
STRASBOURG
AFP, STRASBOURG, FRANCE
Italian second seed Francesca Schiavone won her fifth WTA title and first since the 2010 French Open when she captured the Strasbourg claycourt tournament with a 6-4, 6-4 win over Alize Cornet.
It was the Italian veteran’s eighth win in nine career meetings against the 66th-ranked French player.
“It’s a great feeling and I want to keep going this way. I’m happy again. I’m feeling the sensation of fighting and feeling the pain, and enjoying my game again,” Schiavone said.
Cornet added: “Right now I’m disappointed, but Francesca was playing well the whole week, not even losing a set. My tennis is improving and coming back. It was only positives for me this week, and now I hope to have a good Roland Garros.”
Schiavone will be seeded 14 at the French Open, which starts in Paris on Sunday, and meets Japanese veteran Kimiko Date Krumm in the first round.
Cornet faces Chinese 31st seed Zheng Jie in her first-round tie.
BELGIAN OPEN
AP, BRUSSELS
Agnieszka Radwanska of Poland beat Simona Halep of Romania 7-5, 6-0 to win the Belgian Open.
The third-ranked Radwanska had a tough opponent in Halep through much of the first set. The Romanian even served for the first set before she crumbled under pressure, losing the last nine games.
It was Radwanska’s third victory of the season after she won titles in Dubai and Miami.
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