World No. 2 Novak Djokovic and No. 12 Nicolas Almagro provided an amusing afternoon of tennis yesterday in two exhibition matches full of laughter. The afternoon started with a super tie-breaker, in which Djokovic and Almagro teamed up with local young talent. Almagro and his partner, 14-year-old Lee Ho-chun, beat their opponents 10-8.
Leading 7-4, Spaniard Almagro ran around on court to entertain the fans and distract his opponents when Djokovic’s partner, 12-year-old Tseng Chun-hsin, served.
Not to be outshone by Almagro’s humor, Djokovic jokingly did a push-up before taking Lee’s serve, drawing a burst of laughter from the audience at the National Taiwan Sport University in Linkou District, New Taipei City.
Photo: AFP
The light-hearted atmosphere was carried into a best-of-three singles match between the two tennis stars.
The 25-year-old Serb sometimes challenged the chair umpire or screamed in dismay when his returns were called out in the first set before he managed to finish it 7-6 (5).
Trailing 3-0 in the second set, Almagro mimicked retired US player Andy Roddick at Djokovic’s request and the Serb, in return, impersonated world No. 4 Rafael Nadal and Nadal’s signature posture — pulling his pants down before serving.
Photo: AFP
The stars’ spontaneous idea of letting the line judges play on behalf of them and Djokovic’s occasional chants of jia-you — the Chinese equivalent of “go, go, go” — to Tseng, also had the audience laughing.
The Serb said at the end of the match that it was nice to “play good tennis, but also to smile, have fun and do something different.”
The two players arrived in Taiwan a day earlier and Almagro also coached local young talent at a Taipei junior-high school.
Photo: Chang Chia-ming, Taipei Times
After the short Taiwan trip, Djokovic left for Beijing to compete in the China Open, in which he won the men’s singles in 2009 and 2010. He skipped the ATP Tour 500 event last year because of injury. Almagro, meanwhile, will play in the Rakuten Open in Japan.
Both Djokovic and Almagro are also scheduled to play in the Shanghai ATP Masters 1000 that takes place immediately after the Beijing event.
In the next few weeks, Djokovic will have a chance to regain the world No. 1 ranking. He currently trails world No. 1 Roger Federer by about 1,300 ATP ranking points.
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