Rafael Nadal is not sure how his injured left knee will respond to his first hardcourt match of the year at the BNP Paribas Open.
Nadal is a two-time champion and three-time finalist at the event. He has not played a match on a hard court in almost a year and is only a month into his comeback from a left-knee injury that sidelined him for seven months.
He has played three tournaments since returning, all on clay, and won titles in Brazil and Acapulco, Mexico, after losing to Horacio Zeballos in the final in Chile in his first week back.
Photo: Reuters
“The results on clay were positive, especially because the knee was feeling better and better every week, especially last week,” Nadal said. “Now I’m going to try here on hard [court]. I don’t know [what might happen]. I cannot say much. I’m not confident about what I will be able to do here after one year of not playing on hard. I will try my best. I don’t expect anything in results here.”
His first match will be today, against Ryan Harrison of the US.
Down the road could be a quarter-final round matchup with No. 2 Roger Federer and a semi-final match against No. 4 David Ferrer, whom Nadal beat 6-0, 6-2 in the Acapulco final.
For that to happen, it would take the same kind of improvement Nadal saw between his loss to Zeballos and his win over Ferrer.
Two-time tournament champions Lleyton Hewitt and Daniela Hantuchova both won long first-round matches on Thursday. Hewitt, who got his titles back-to-back in 2002 and 2003, beat Lukas Rosol of the Czech Republic 6-4, 3-6, 6-1 and will face No. 15 seed John Isner today.
Hantuchova, the women’s champion in 2002 and 2007, beat qualifier Stephanie Foretz Gacon of France 6-3, 3-6, 6-4 in 2 hours, 12 minutes to set up a second-round match against reigning champion and top seed Victoria Azarenka.
In women’s first-round matches on Thursday, Taylor Townsend, a 16-year-old American playing her fourth professional match of the year, beat Lucie Hradecka of the Czech Republic 3-6, 7-6 (7/1), 6-3 and 42-year-old Kimiko Date-Krumm of Japan was a 6-4, 3-6, 6-4 winner over Galena Voskoboeva of Kazakhstan.
The men’s first round started with David Nalbandian of Argentina beating Marcel Granollers of Spain 6-4, 6-2 and Bernard Tomic of Australia ousting Thomaz Bellucci of Brazil 6-4, 6-3.
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