Defending champion Andy Murray posted a comfortable straight-sets win over Lukas Lacko of Slovakia to earn a place in the quarter-finals of the Japan Open yesterday.
The top-seeded Briton, who won the US Open and took the gold medal in the men’s singles at the London Olympics, needed only 56 minutes to secure a 6-1, 6-2 victory in the second round.
With the win, Murray set up a quarter-final meeting against Beijing Olympic doubles gold medalist Stanislas Wawrinka of Switzerland.
Photo: Reuters
“I started the match almost perfect. I only lost a couple of points in the first four or five games, so that was important, and once I got a break in the second set I started to play better again,” Murray said.
When he was asked about the match against seventh seed Wawrinka, he said: “He is playing very well just now. He had a good US Open and he also did well in Cincinnati, he made a semi-final.”
“I think hard courts are a good surface for him. We had a lot of tough matches over years, especially on hard courts, so I expect the same one on Friday,” Murray added.
Wawrinka squandered three match points in the second set leading 6-3 in the tiebreaker before beating Jeremy Chardy of France 7-6 (7/1), 6-7 (6/8), 7-5 in 2 hours, 37 minutes.
“For sure, it wasn’t easy in the second set, especially after having three match points in the tiebreak,” said Wawrinka, 27, who fired 19 aces. “You need to be ready to still play the third set and to fight. It was really tough for me, but at the end I managed well. I was playing really good in the third set.”
As for the match against Murray, Wawrinka said: “He is playing great, he won the Olympics, he won the US Open and he always plays great here.”
In the first-round action, Juan Monaco of Argentina whipped Grigor Dimitrov of Bulgaria 6-2, 6-1, while third seed Janko Tipsarevic of Serbia outclassed Bangkok finalist Gilles Simon of France 4-6, 6-3, 6-1.
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