Wimbledon champion Serena Williams advanced to the Stanford Classic final after she crushed Sorana Cirstea 6-1, 6-2 on Saturday and will meet fellow American Coco Vandeweghe, who made her first WTA final after she overpowered Yanina Wickmayer 6-2, 3-6, 6-2.
Williams, who had a superb service game during Wimbledon, struggled against Cirstea, but easily controlled the tempo of the match against the Romanian, who had trouble keeping the ball in court and committed 32 unforced errors.
Williams broke Cirstea four times in the match and faced only one break point, which she easily fought off.
Photo: Reuters
She was the steadier and more creative player, wowing the crowd with a couple of sweet lob winners over Cirstea’s head.
“I really wasn’t happy today, but I did what I had to do to win and that’s important,” said Williams, who was so dissatisfied with her first serve, making just 38 percent, she went out and practiced on it straight after the match.
“I’m just trying to get something, and I feel like I haven’t served well all week and 38 percent is outrageous,” Williams said, adding that she was looking forward to meeting her young compatriot in the final.
“She’s done well and will go out tomorrow and go for the glory,” Williams said. “I don’t blame her because I’ll do the same thing.”
A lucky loser, the 20-year-old Vandeweghe used her massive serve and big ground strokes to upset the fifth seed Wickmayer, nailing 12 aces of her 32 winners overall.
“I’m really excited to be in the final of a WTA event,” Vandeweghe said. “Hopefully, this is good omen for me for the rest of the summer going into the US Open.”
The 1.85m tall Vandeweghe, the daughter of a former Olympic swimmer, came out firing and immediately broke the Belgian with a backhand winner, then broke her again to take a 5-2 lead, before she closed out the set with three service winners and a forehand down the line.
Wickmayer rallied in the second set, breaking Vandeweghe to 2-0 when the American erred on a forehand, and then successfully sat on the lead with precise ground strokes.
However, Vandeweghe regained her edge in the third set, grabbing a break to 3-1 when Wickmayer double-faulted.
The Belgian held four break points in the next game, but Vandeweghe used her booming serve to get out of trouble, taking care of two of the break points with aces.
“I’ve worked hard on my serve and it’s a big weapon for me,” Vandeweghe said. “There are a lot of matches where my serve is going to come through in the clutch. Plus the way I’m playing off the ground, it puts pressure on my opponent to make her return of serve that much better.”
Wickmayer said the American’s serve was the key to her win.
“Even when I was there, I couldn’t do a lot,” Wickmayer said. “She hits pretty hard. Even her second serve bounces high and it’s hard to do anything with it. When I had chances on her serve, she just aced it away.”
Hall of fame Championships
AFP, NEWPORT, Rhode Island
Top seed and defending champion John Isner was to take on former world No. 1 Lleyton Hewitt yesterday in the final of the ATP Hall of Fame Championships.
The US’ Isner fired 11 aces in a 7-6 (7/4), 6-3 victory over sixth-seeded compatriot Ryan Harrison, while Hewitt reached his first ATP final in more than two years with a 6-4, 5-7, 6-2 victory over 2009 Newport champion Rajeev Ram.
Hewitt, who received a wild card into the draw, was playing in his first semi-final since June 2010, when he captured the grass court title in Halle.
Hewitt rallied from an early break in both the first and third sets, finally wrapping up the victory in 2 hours and 21 minutes.
“Early on in the match, I had a lot of break points, but he came up with big first serves,” Hewitt said. “I didn’t get a look at a second serve on a break point. It was a matter of if I got that small opportunity, with a second serve and a break point, I had to step up and take it.”
The 31-year-old Aussie was pleased to keep his run going on the grass courts of Newport.
“It’s fantastic, obviously,” said Hewitt, who is again battling back from injury after undergoing radical foot surgery in February.
He said he was focused now on his movement and mechanics, and trying to put the injury behind him mentally.
“You come back from surgery and you think about everything,” Hewitt said.
“My whole mechanics have changed. So that’s taking a bit of time,” he said.
Although Hewitt’s ranking has plummeted to 233, Isner was aware that the Aussie would be a dangerous opponent. Hewitt is 7-0 in grass court finals in his career.
“I’ve never beaten him before, and I’ve never played him on grass,” Isner said. “It’s going to be a big challenge. It’s also going to be an honor sharing the court with him. He’s one of the guys I really, really, respect. It’s good to see him back, but I hope I can beat him tomorrow.”
Isner’s contest with Harrison went with serve until the first-set tiebreaker, which stayed close until Isner won three straight points for a 6-3 lead.
Harrison saved the first set point he faced when Isner sent a service return long, but Harrison double-faulted on the next.
Isner broke early in the second frame and that was all he needed. He never faced a break point himself in the 86-minute match.
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