Top-seed Agnieszka Radwanska shone in the rain at the ASB Classic women’s tournament in Auckland yesterday, cruising into the semi-finals with a 6-3, 6-3 win over unseeded Russian Elena Vesnina.
Radwanska coasted through the first set, but in the second, after a 90-minute rain delay when she trailed 1-2 on serve, she stepped up a gear and wasted no time in finishing off the match.
The Polish player now faces the only unseeded competitor remaining, Jamie Hampton, for a place in the finals after the American beat Kiki Bertens of the Netherlands 6-1, 6-7 (5/7), 6-2 in their quarter-final.
The second semi-final pits third seed Yanina Wickmayer against eighth seed Mona Barthel, who has spent less than three hours on court in her first three games.
Wickmayer had the frustration of three rain breaks on her way to beating fellow Belgian Kirsten Flipkens 6-3, 6-4 and finished the game with a disputed umpire’s ruling.
A line-call was overruled on match point after TV replays showed the ball was out.
Barthel romped to the quickest victory of the week when she shrugged off an early service break to dispose of Swede Johanna Larsson 6-2, 6-1 in just 44 minutes.
From 0-2 down, the German reeled off nine straight games as Larsson tired from two previous three-setters, which included knocking out second seed Julia Goerges.
Although ranked 39th in the world, Barthel is brimming with confidence going into the semi-finals and believes she can repeat her win over 23rd-ranked Wickmayer in the Hobart final a year ago.
“I’m playing really good tennis, and if I can play the same way [today], I think I have a pretty good chance,” Barthel said.
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
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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