Top seeded Juan Martin Del Potro moved closer to a successful defense of his title at the Swiss Indoors on Thursday by beating Marcos Baghdatis for a third time this season.
Del Potro, who won 6-1, 6-2, is next to face Paul-Henri Mathieu after the French player beat compatriot Michael Llodra 6-4, 6-3.
Del Potro is fresh from a successful Asia tour, winning the Tokyo title and reaching the Shanghai Masters final against Novak Djokovic after beating Rafael Nadal.
Photo: EPA
The Argentine, ranked fifth in the world, has not dropped a set so far in Basel, where he beat five-time champion Roger Federer for the title a year ago in the Swiss player’s hometown.
Del Potro’s victory in 72 minutes was his 45th win of the season, leaving him with 11 quarter-finals or better from 16 events played.
“The start was tough for me,” said the 2009 US Open winner, who broke his opponent twice in each set and took victory on a fourth match point.
“I had a tough service game to start, but then I gained confidence after I broke him for the first time,” he said. “I served better than yesterday and generally played a better match. I led 5-0 in the first set, but also had some easy mistakes. You have to be careful against a good player like him, he can come back at any time.”
Del Potro put Baghdatis under pressure in an eight-minute sixth game, in which the Cypriot saved four break points to win his first game of the match for 1-5.
Del Potro finished off the set a game later, and broke in the fifth and seventh games of the second set to conclude the win.
Del Potro has already qualified for the eight-man season finals in London starting a week from Monday, but would find winning a second straight title in Federer’s territory a welcome boost.
“I like my level right now, I’m playing well, but I’m still far behind the top players. Their level is better than mine and I have to keep working to improve,” he said.
In other second-round results, Bulgarian eighth seed Grigor Dimitrov beat Alexandr Dolgopolov 6-3, 6-2, winning his seventh match in a row after claiming a career-first title at the weekend in Stockholm. He was to meets Federer in yesterday’s quarter-finals.
Canadian Vasek Pospisil reached his third quarter-final of the season with a 6-3, 6-4 defeat of Ivo Karlovic.
Frenchman Edouard Roger-Vasselin put out German Tobias Kamke 7-5, 6-3, while Daniel Brands of Germany reached the last eight as he defeated Poland’s Lukasz Kubot 6-2, 6-4.
VALENCIA OPEN
AP, VALENCIA, Spain
Top-seeded David Ferrer made the Valencia Open quarter-finals by easing past Julien Benneteau of France 6-2, 6-1 on Thursday.
Benneteau squandered four break points against the Spaniard and, as Ferrer acknowledged afterwards, “the score doesn’t reflect how tough this match was.”
The match had tense rallies in the first set and Ferrer said it was tough, physically.
Jeremy Chardy of France provided spectators with a second-round upset when he broke fourth-seeded John Isner of the US three times to win 7-6 (7/5), 6-3.
Other winners included fifth-seeded Jerzy Janowicz of Poland, who was scheduled to next face Ferrer, Jarkko Nieminen of Finland and Mikhail Youzhny of Russia, who were also to meet on Friday, and third-seeded Nicolas Almagro of Spain.
Taiwanese world No. 1 women’s doubles star Hsieh Su-wei on Saturday overcame a first-set loss to win her opening match at the Madrid Open. Top seeds Hsieh and partner Elise Mertens of Belgium, with whom she last month won her fourth Indian Wells women’s doubles title, bounced back from a rocky first set to beat Asia Muhammad of the US and Aldila Sutjiadi of Indonesia 2-6, 6-4, 10-2. Hsieh and Mertens were next to face Heather Watson of the UK and Xu Yifan of China in the round of 16. Thirty-eight-year-old Hsieh last month reclaimed her world No. 1 spot after her Indian
EYES ON THE PRIZE: Armed with three solid men’s singles shuttlers and doubles Olympic champions, Taiwan aim to make their first Thomas Cup semi-final, Chou Tien-chen said Taiwanese badminton star Tai Tzu-ying yesterday quickly dispatched Malaysia’s Goh Jin Wei in straight sets, while her male counterpart Chou Tien-chen beat Germany’s Kai Schaefer, as Taiwan’s women’s and men’s teams won their Group B opening rounds of the TotalEnergies BWF Thomas and Uber Cup Finals in Chengdu, China. World No. 5 Tai beat Goh 21-19, 22-20 in a speedy 33 minutes, her fourth straight victory over the world No. 24 shuttler since they first faced each other in the quarter-finals of the 2018 Malaysia Open, where Tai went on to win the women’s singles title. Malaysia followed up Tai’s opening victory
Chen Yi-tung (陳奕通) secured a historic Olympic berth on Sunday by winning the senior men’s foil event at the 2024 Asia Oceania Zonal Olympic Fencing Qualifiers in United Arab Emirates. Chen defeated Samuel Elijah of Singapore 15-4 in the final in Dubai to secure the only wild card in the event, making him the first male Olympian fencer from Taiwan in 36 years and only the sixth Taiwanese fencer to ever qualify for the quadrennial event. The last appearance by a Taiwanese male fencer at the Olympics was in 1988, when Wang San-tsai (王三財) and Cheng Ming-hsiang (鄭明祥) competed in Seoul. The
Rafael Nadal on Tuesday lost in straight sets to 31st-ranked Jiri Lehecka in the fourth round at the Madrid Open, while Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei advanced to the semi-finals in the women’s doubles. Nadal said that he was feeling good about his progress following his latest injury layoff. Nadal called it a “positive week” in every way and said his body held up well. “I was able to play four matches, a couple of tough matches,” Nadal said. “So very positive, winning three matches, playing four matches at the high level of tennis. I enjoyed a lot playing at home. I leave here with