Andy Roddick won a first-set tiebreaker then completed a straight-sets win over Nicolas Mahut at the Atlanta Open on Wednesday.
Roddick beat the Frenchman 7-6 (4), 6-3 in the second round after rain delayed the tournament for four-and-a-half hours.
Roddick, who will play Michael Russell in the quarter-finals, broke Mahut in the ninth point of the tiebreaker and held serve to take a tough first set.
Russell, at 34, is the oldest player in the main draw, but he outlasted No. 5 seed Kevin Anderson of South Africa 6-7 (5), 6-4, 6-4 to reach his first ATP World Tour hard-court quarter-finals since February last year.
No. 8 seed Go Soeda of Japan beat Russia’s Igor Kunitsyn 6-1, 7-5. Their match began at 4pm, but when the rain hit 25 minutes later, the order of play was changed. Soeda and Kunitsyn had to wait seven-and-a-half hours for Russell and Anderson to finish before their match could restart.
Soeda led the first set 3-0 before play was stopped. The match, which lasted 1 hour, 31 minutes, ended at 1:28am.
No. 3 seed Kei Nishikori of Japan held off Lithuania’s Ricardas Berankis 6-4, 6-7 (7), 6-4 in a match that ended at 1:47am.
Soeda and Nishikori will clash in a rare all-Japanese quarter-final.
Roddick’s victory avenged a four-set loss to Mahut at the French Open on May 27.
It was Roddick’s earliest exit from a Grand Slam tournament since 2007 and his first loss to Mahut in five career matches.
Though Roddick did not have to wait nearly as long as some of the players to get on the court, the damp conditions were hardly to his liking. He and Mahut occasionally slipped as they tried to reach for shots.
Russell and Anderson began their match at 4pm, but they had to wait nearly five hours before resuming.
In the tiebreaker, Anderson held serve to take the 11th point and broke Russell to win the first set. Russell, though, held his composure to avenge a loss to Anderson in Atlanta last year.
German Championships
AP, HAMBURG, Germany
Veteran Tommy Haas rallied to upset defending champion Gilles Simon 4-6, 6-3, 6-4 on Wednesday for a place in the quarter-finals of the German Tennis Championships.
Haas beat Roger Federer for the title in Halle, Germany, last month and is looking to become the first home player to win the tournament since Michael Stich in 1993.
Haas will next meet another German, Florian Mayer, who routed Robin Haase 6-2, 6-1.
Fourth-seeded Marin Cilic stayed on course for a second title in two weeks by dismissing Federico Delbonis 6-3, 6-2.
Albert Ramos beat Lukas Rosol 7-6 (8), 4-6, 6-3.
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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
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