Fernando Verdasco booked his first ATP semi-final of the year on Friday, powering home to beat Donald Young 7-6 (7/1), 6-1 in the US Men’s Clay Court Championship.
The fourth-seeded Spanish veteran said Young’s solid play had him feeling “uncomfortable” in the opening set, but once he had pocketed the tiebreaker, he was on his way.
“He played great tennis in the first set,” Verdasco said. “I kept fighting and he didn’t serve well in the game I broke him. After that, he started missing a little more, including in the tie-break. After I won the tiebreak, I took extra confidence and started to be more stable on the court.”
Verdasco next faces Santiago Giraldo, who defeated Alejandro Gonzalez 6-3, 6-4.
The 26-year-old Giraldo will be playing the fifth ATP semi-final of his career and his second this year. He fell to Leonardo Mayer in the semis at Vina del Mar earlier this year.
Third-seeded Spaniard Nicolas Almagro also advanced, downing American Jack Sock 6-2, 6-4.
Almagro will face American Sam Querrey, who fired 15 aces and saved all four break-points he faced in a 6-3, 6-7 (8/10), 6-3, victory over Germany’s Dustin Brown.
Querrey, a former world No. 17, is in the final four in Houston for the second time. He finished runner-up in 2010.
Almagro will be trying to improve on his runner-up finish in Houston last year, when he lost to American John Isner in the final.
GRAND PRIX HASSAN II
AP, CASABLANCA, Morocco
Eighth-seeded Guillermo Garcia-Lopez of Spain beat third-seeded Benoit Paire of France 7-5, 7-6 (7/4) on Friday to reach the semi-finals of the Grand Prix Hassan II.
Garcia-Lopez served for the match after breaking Paire for the fifth time, but the Frenchman broke straight back to force a tiebreaker. However, Garcia-Lopez prevailed, and next faces qualifier Roberto Carballes Baena of Spain, who defeated Andrey Kuznetsov of Russia 6-4, 6-2.
Also, fourth-seeded Marcel Granollers of Spain had nine aces as he rallied to beat Pablo Carreno Busta 6-7 (4/7), 6-3, 6-0 in an all-Spanish match, breaking his opponent’s serve six times.
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