Two-time defending champ Mardy Fish surrendered the Atlanta Open tennis crown when an injured left ankle forced him to retire from his second-round match on Thursday.
The second-seeded American was leading Luxembourg’s Gilles Muller 6-4, 3-2 when he called it quits at the hardcourt event.
Fish, 30, stumbled while trying to return a drop shot and rolled his left ankle at the net, dropping to the ground and staying down for about a minute.
Photo: EPA
He got up and limped off to his sideline chair, sat down for a short break and returned to finish the fifth game, but then chose to withdraw.
Fish, who beat American compatriot John Isner in the last two Atlanta finals, recently underwent a procedure called cardiac catheter ablation, which deals with misfiring electrical pulses in the heart.
Isner, meanwhile, advanced on Thursday to the quarter-finals by defeating Ruben Bemelmans of Belgium 4-6, 6-3, 6-4.
Australian Matthew Ebden beat 32-year-old US player James Blake 6-7 (6/8), 6-4, 6-4, and was due to play Muller yesterday.
US player Jack Sock also won his second-round match by beating Steve Johnson 7-6 (7/5), 7-6 (7/5).
MERCURY INSURANCE OPEN
AP, CARLSBAD, California
Christina McHale of the US held off Japan’s Misaki Doi 4-6, 6-4, 6-4 at the Mercury Insurance Open on Thursday, advancing to a quarter-final against No. 1 seed Marion Bartoli of France.
McHale, the No. 5 seed, needed three match points in the last game before she closed out the second-round match when Doi hit a backhand into the net.
McHale faced 19 break points, but Doi only converted three.
In other second-round matches second-seeded Dominika Cibulkova of Slovakia was a 6-2, 6-4 winner over New Zealand’s Marina Erakovic and Ursula Radwanska of Poland cruised to a 6-2, 6-1 win over lucky loser Melanie Oudin.
Radwanska, the younger sister of world No. 2-ranked Agnieszka Radwanska, served well and took advantage of the US player’s poor serve to control the match.
Radwanska, who won 88 percent (23 of 26) of her first serves, reached the quarter-finals for the second straight week. She lost last week at Stanford to eventual runner-up CoCo Vandeweghe.
GERMAN CHAMPIONSHIPS
AP, HAMBURG, Germany
Top-seeded Nicolas Almagro beat Nikolay Davydenko 6-4, 6-3 to reach the German Tennis Championships quarter-finals on Thursday.
Third-seeded Juan Monaco of Argentina beat Daniel Munoz-De La Nava of Spain 7-6 (7/4), 6-3.
No. 6 Philipp Kohlschreiber swept past Fabio Fognini of Italy 7-5, 6-2 and Jeremy Chardy of France edged Julian Reister of Germany 7-5, 6-4.
In the quarter-finals, Almagro plays Kohlschreiber, Monaco meets Chardy, Marin Cilic faces Albert Ramos, and Florian Mayer goes against Tommy Haas.
SWISS OPEN
AP, GSTAAD, Switzerland
Top-seeded Janko Tipsarevic of Serbia was made to work for victory against Austrian qualifier Martin Fischer at the Swiss Open before sealing a 4-6, 7-6 (7/1), 6-3 second-round win on Thursday.
Tipsarevic is seeking back-to-back clay-court titles after winning the tournament in Stuttgart, Germany, last week.
Two other seeds in action both lost, leaving Tipsarevic and No. 5 Feliciano Lopez as the only seeded players in yesterday’s quarter-finals.
Defending champion Marcel Granollers, the No. 2 seed from Spain, lost 6-4, 6-2 against Lukasz Kubot of Poland.
Czech qualifier Jan Hernych, who played through three rounds to reach the main draw, beat seventh-seeded Santiago Giraldo of Colombia 6-3, 2-6, 6-4.
Grigor Dimitrov of Bulgaria beat Dustin Brown of Germany 7-6 (7/3), 3-6, 6-2.
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