Samantha Stosur insisted her split with coach Miles Maclagan on the eve of Wimbledon was not the cause of her latest All England Club nightmare.
Stosur became the first major casualty of the women’s tournament as the Australian 17th seed slumped to a 6-3, 6-4 first-round defeat against Belgium’s Yanina Wickmayer yesterday.
The former US Open champion has now failed to get beyond the third round in 12 appearances at the grass-court Grand Slam.
Photo: EPA
Stosur, 30, served 13 aces and hit 25 winners, but still came up short against the world No. 54, continuing a miserable sequence of seven successive Grand Slam appearances without getting past the fourth round.
The dismal defeat came just days after Stosur announced she was parting ways with Maclagan, a Zambian-born Scot who previously coached reigning Wimbledon champion Andy Murray.
However Stosur, who lost 15 of her 34 matches working with Maclagan and has failed to reach a final since the Hobart International in January, made it clear the split was not to blame for her dispiriting loss.
“No. I had some really great practices,” Stosur said. “I felt really good going into today’s match. I didn’t think about it at all. It’s something that happened. I went out there today and unfortunately I didn’t win. I don’t feel like I played bad. In some ways it sucks because you’re done, you wait another four or five weeks till you get to play again.”
In the men’s singles, Taiwanese qualifier Jimmy Wang cruised into the second round after a 6-3, 6-3, 6-2 victory over Alejandro Gonzalez of Colombia.
Wang next faces 17th seed Mikhail Youzhny after the Russian defeated British hope James Ward 6-2, 6-2, 6-1.
In the women’s draw, Former world No. 1 Victoria Azarenka had no such problems as she won her first match since January on the same court where she suffered a knee injury which ended her hopes last year.
Azarenka, the eighth seed, won 6-3, 7-5 against Croatia’s Mirjana Lucic-Baroni, who was a semi-finalist back in 1999, on Court One.
That was the same arena where she hurt her right knee in a nasty fall in the first round 12 months ago, an injury which sparked her withdrawal from the second round.
It was a defeat which led to Azarenka angrily condemning the All England Club courts as dangerous.
This year, the former Australian Open champion has been plagued by a left-foot injury which kept her off tour from Indian Wells in March to Eastbourne last week, where she lost her opener to Camila Giorgi.
Azarenka next faces Serbia’s Bojana Jovanovski.
Sloane Stephens’ streak of reaching the second week at six consecutive Grand Slam tournaments ended with a 6-2, 7-6 (8/6) first-round loss to world No. 109 Maria Kirilenko of Russia.
Stephens saved five match points serving at 5-6, sending it to a tiebreaker, but Kirilenko clinched the match after a wide forehand by Stephens.
Stephens, the 18th seed, had held the longest active run of fourth-round appearances at Grand Slams by a woman, dating to a semi-final showing at last year’s Australian Open. At Wimbledon last year, Stephens got to the quarter-finals, where she lost to eventual champion Marion Bartoli.
Japanese veteran Kimiko Date Krumm also lost in the first round, beaten 3-6, 6-4, 7-5 by Ekaterina Makarova of Russia.
The 43-year-old Date Krumm, who reached the semifinals at Wimbledon 18 years ago, was the oldest player entered in the tournament this year. She made her Wimbledon debut in 1989, a year after Makarova was born.
Date Krumm made 47 unforced errors in the 2 hour, 24 minute match as Makarova beat Date-Krumm for the third consecutive time and the first time on grass.
Russia’s Elena Vesnina was the first winner at the Grand Slam when she breezed past Patricia Mayr-Achleitner 6-0, 6-4. Vesnina goes on to face Barbora Zahlavova Strycova of the Czech Republic, who beat Alla Kudryavtseva 6-2, 6-2 for a place in the third round, while China’s Peng Shuai faced a tougher assignment as she battled to a 6-4, 3-6, 6-4 victory over Britain’s Johanna Konta.
Additional reporting by staff writer
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
Rafael Nadal on Wednesday said the upcoming French Open would be the moment to “give everything and die” on the court after his comeback from injury in Barcelona was curtailed by Alex de Minaur. The 22-time Grand Slam title winner, back playing this week after three months on the sidelines, battled well, but eventually crumbled 7-5, 6-1 against the world No. 11 from Australia in the second round. Nadal, 37, who missed virtually all of last season, is hoping to compete at the French Open next month where he is the record 14-time champion. The Spaniard said the clash with De Minaur was
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