The US’ Jack Sock defeated former champion Ivo Karlovic 6-1, 6-4 in the first round of the US Men’s Clay Court Championship on Monday in Houston, Texas.
The 21-year-old Sock had lost both previous meetings with the 2.08m tall Karlovic, who won the only ATP Tour clay-court event in the US in 2007.
Sock broke the eighth-seeded Croatian’s huge serve twice in the first set and won in less than an hour at the River Oaks Country Club.
It was a different story for Sock’s countryman, Sam Querrey, who had to battle to get past Alex Bogomolov Jr of Russia 6-4, 7-6 (6).
“Right now, I’ll take one [a win] pretty much however I can get it,” said Querrey, whose ranking has plummeted from a high of No. 17 in 2011 to 82nd now.
Querrey, the 2010 runner-up in Houston, has not advanced into the third round of a tournament since the Australian Open in January.
“It’s the first time I’ve been able to grind through a tough match like that all year,” he said. “Hopefully, it will lead to more wins and better results.”
In the day’s other matches, Germany’s Dustin Brown beat the US’ Rhyne Williams 6-1, 6-2, while Alejandro Gonzalez of Colombia rallied to eliminate wild card Marcos Baghdatis of Cyprus 4-6, 6-2, 6-1.
Defending champion and top seed John Isner received a first-round bye and will play Brown in the second round today.
GRAND PRIX HASSAN II
AP, CASABLANCA, Morocco
Fifth-seeded Joao Sousa of Portugal beat Igor Sijsling of the Netherlands 6-2, 6-4 on Monday to reach the second round of the Grand Prix Hassan II tournament.
Sousa broke Sijsling twice in each set and won 81 percent of his first-serve points and next plays against either David Goffin of Begium or Spain’s Roberto Carballes Baena.
Carlos Berlocq of Argentina also advanced with a comfortable 6-4, 6-1 win against Teymuraz Gabashvili of Russia.
Berlocq broke Gabashvili’s serve four times and the Russian player struggled throughout on his serve, making eight double-faults and getting only 37 percent of his first serves in.
The Argentine player next faces either eighth-seeded Guillermo Garcia-Lopez of Spain or Mikhail Kukushkin, who played for Kazakhstan in their 3-2 defeat to Switzerland in the Davis Cup quarter-finals last weekend.
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