Stanislas Wawrinka seriously dented his hopes of reaching the ATP season final when crashing out of the Swiss Indoors with a 6-4, 6-3 first-round loss to Edouard Roger-Vasselin on Tuesday.
The same fate befell second seed Tomas Berdych, when the next man in the queue to qualify for the eight-man year-end event was beaten by Ivo Karlovic 4-6, 7-6 (7/4), 7-6 (7/2).
Berdych had a chance to serve out a three-set win, but failed and then could not extricate himself from the big-serve danger of the Croatian, who won with 23 aces in almost two-and-a-half hours.
Photo: EPA
Wawrinka, now five times a loser in Basel opening matches, ended disappointingly on a fifth double-fault of an evening to forget for the fourth seed at his home event.
The Swiss stands provisionally eighth in the race to the World Tour Finals, but he now must work a miracle next week at the Paris Masters — the last event of the regular season — to save his qualifying hopes.
The US Open semi-finalist, who put out holder Andy Murray in New York and reached a semi-final last month in Kuala Lumpur, showed only a shadow of his game as he went down to the Frenchman in 71 minutes.
After dropping the first set, the sluggish Swiss was broken to start the second and could never close the gap on his 65th-ranked opponent.
Meanwhile, Uzbek Denis Istomin booked a second-round meeting with former world No. 1 Roger Federer as he beat Argentina’s Horacio Zeballos 7-5, 7-6 (7/3).
Federer, whose poor form this season has yielded just one title and seen him slump to sixth in the world, is battling to reach the eight-man World Tour Finals early next month, with every win here and in Paris crucial to him appearing in a tournament he has won six times.
He began with a victory in front of his home crowd on Monday as he beat Adrian Mannarino.
Federer has never lost to 48th-ranked Istomin in five previous meetings, defeating him most recently at Indian Wells in March, despite suffering from a painful back.
Japanese sixth seed Kei Nishikori, losing finalist two years ago to Federer, reached the second round by winning 6-2, 6-4 against Switzerland’s Marco Chiudinelli, a wild-card entry and childhood friend of Federer.
Nishikori next plays Croatian Ivan Dodig, who advanced in just nine minutes as Argentine Carlos Berlocq retired while trailing 2-0.
Marcos Baghdatis also reached the second round, winning his first match since late last month with a defeat of German qualifier Benjamin Becker 7-6 (10/8), 6-1.
The Cypriot is to face the winner from top-seed and title-holder Juan Martin del Potro and Swiss wild card Henri Laaksonen.
VALENCIA OPEN
AFP, VALENCIA, Spain
Colombian Alejandro Falla thrashed sixth seed Gilles Simon for the loss of just one game to progress to the second round of the Valencia Open on Tuesday.
Simon had won both the previous encounters between the pair, but failed to take his chances as he passed up five break points on the Falla serve before slumping to a 6-0, 6-1 defeat in little over an hour.
There were no such upsets for Jerzy Janowicz and Nicolas Almagro, though, as both progressed in straight sets.
Wimbledon semi-finalist Janowicz had to overcome a stiff test from Spaniard Pablo Carreno Busta, but the Pole’s typically dominant serve was on song as he fired 14 aces on his way to a 7-5, 7-6 (9/7) win over the world No. 66.
Janowicz is to face Joao Sousa in the last 16 after the Portuguese beat Guillermo Garcia Lopez 6-3, 7-5.
No. 3 seed Almagro stayed on course for a potential semi-final meeting with Janowicz or David Ferrer with a 6-2, 6-3 success over compatriot Pablo Andujar.
Almagro was completely dominant in the first set and despite losing his own serve for the only time in the match early in the second, he broke Andujar three times to close out a comfortable victory.
There was more disappointment for Australian Bernard Tomic as his frustrating year continued when he was forced to retire in the third set against Mikhail Youhzny, with the Russian leading 3-6, 6-4, 4-1.
It was not a good day for home favorites Fernando Verdasco and Feliciano Lopez, as they fell in straight sets to Michal Przysiezny and Julien Benneteau respectively.
Top seeds Ferrer and Tommy Haas begin their campaigns in the coastal Spanish city yesterday.
Ferrer faced an extremely tough first-round tie with Gael Monfils as he aims for a fourth title in Valencia, whilst Haas was to face compatriot Philipp Kohlschreiber as he continues his quest to make it to the ATP World Tour Finals in London next month.
A sumo star was born in Japan on Sunday when 24-year-old Takerufuji became the first wrestler in 110 years to win a top-division tournament on his debut, triumphing at the 15-day Spring Grand Sumo Tournament in Osaka despite injuring his ankle on the penultimate day. Takerufuji, whose injury had left him in a wheelchair outside the ring, shoved out the higher-ranked Gonoyama at the Edion Arena Osaka to the delight of the crowd, giving him an unassailable record of 13 wins and two losses to claim the Emperor’s Cup. “I did it just through willpower. I didn’t really know what was going
The US’ Ilia Malinin on Saturday produced six scintillating quadruple jumps, including a quadruple Axel, in the men’s free skate to capture his first figure skating world title. The 19-year-old nicknamed the “Quad god,” who is the only skater to land a quadruple Axel in competition, dazzled with an array of breathtakingly executed jumps starting with his quad Axel and including a quadruple Lutz in combination with a triple flip and a quadruple toe loop in combination with a triple toe. He added an unexpected triple-triple combination at the end to earn a world-record 227.79 in the free program for a championship
Shohei Ohtani’s interpreter is being criminally investigated by the IRS, and the attorney for his alleged bookmaker said Thursday that the ex-Los Angeles Dodgers employee placed bets on international soccer — but not baseball. The IRS confirmed Thursday that interpreter Ippei Mizuhara and Mathew Bowyer, the alleged illegal bookmaker, are under criminal investigation through the agency’s Los Angeles Field Office. IRS Criminal Investigation spokesperson Scott Villiard said he could not provide additional details. Mizuhara, 39, was fired by the Dodgers on Wednesday following reports from the Los Angeles Times and ESPN about his alleged ties to an illegal bookmaker and debts well
MLB on Friday announced a formal investigation into the scandal swirling around Shohei Ohtani and his former interpreter amid charges that the Los Angeles Dodgers superstar was the victim of “massive theft.” The Dodgers on Wednesday fired Ippei Mizuhara, Ohtani’s long-time interpreter and close friend, after Ohtani’s representatives alleged that the Japanese two-way star had been the victim of theft, which was reported to involve millions of dollars and link Mizuhara to a suspected illegal bookmaker in California. “Major League Baseball has been gathering information since we learned about the allegations involving Shohei Ohtani and Ippei Mizuhara from the news media,” MLB