ROTTERDAM
Berdych to face Wawrinka
Defending champion Tomas Berdych took less than an hour to beat Frenchman Gilles Simon 6-2, 6-1 on Saturday and reach the final in Rotterdam, where he will bid for his 11th career title against Switzerland’s Stanislas Wawrinka. The fourth-seeded Wawrinka beat second-seeded Milos Raonic of Canada 7-6(3), 7-6(7). Earlier, third-seeded Berdych won 95 percent of first service points, hit 14 winners and converted four of five break-point chances. “My game was good and the game plan was even better,” said Berdych, who is 4-6 overall against Simon. “We have worked really hard on my serve. I was able to control it.” Wawrinka, the 2013 Australian Open champion, is chasing his ninth career title. He saved two set points at 4-6 in the second set tiebreaker.
DIAMOND GAMES
Petkovic, Navarro in final
Third-seeded Andrea Petkovic of Germany beat unseeded Barbora Zahlavova Strycova of the Czech Republic 7-6(2), 7-6(6) on Saturday to reach the final, where she faces fifth-seeded Carla Suarez Navarro of Spain. In a laborious match, Petkovic and Zahlavova Strycova broke each other four times in the first set. Zahlavova Strycova served for it at 6-5, but Petkovic forced a tiebreaker. Petkovic looked in command serving at 4-3 in the second set, but Zahlavova Strycova broke her serve to make it 4-4. Earlier, Suarez Navarro had little trouble beating eighth-seeded Karolina Pliskova, breaking the Czech player’s serve five times in a 6-2, 6-2 win. Petkovic, who won three titles last year, is going for her sixth career title, while Suarez Navarro is bidding for her second.
BRAZIL OPEN
Cuevas eyes third ATP title
Qualifier Luca Vanni of Italy defeated home-crowd favorite Joao Souza 6-4, 6-7(5), 6-4 on Saturday, reaching his first ATP final. The 149th-ranked Vanni won the final three games to clinch the victory after nearly three hours. Souza, ranked 110th, was playing the clay-court tournament on a wild-card invitation. Vanni is set to play the final against fifth-seeded Pablo Cuevas of Uruguay, who cruised to a 6-4, 6-3 victory over sixth-seeded Santiago Giraldo of Colombia. The 32nd-ranked Cuevas will be trying to win his third ATP title.
MEMPHIS OPEN
Nishikori scrapes into final
Kei Nishikori is on track for a three-peat after a narrow semi-final victory on Saturday. The Japanese barely averted an upset against Sam Querrey. He lost the first set before winning consecutive tiebreakers for a 5-7, 7-6(5), 7-6(5) victory over the American. World No. 5 Nishikori will meet second seed Kevin Anderson in the final on Sunday. The South African also dropped the first set before recovering to beat American Donald Young 4-6, 6-3, 6-4. Anderson broke Young at love in the seventh game of the final set for a 4-3 lead and held twice for the triumph, his fifth in six meetings with the 25-year-old US left-hander. Anderson has lost his past five ATP finals appearances, most recently in March last year at Acapulco to Grigor Dimitrov. His only ATP titles came at the 2011 South African Open and in 2012 at Delray Beach, Florida, where he now resides. The 28-year-old staved off four break points in the second and third sets to triumph in just under two hours. Nishikori faced a tough opponent in Querrey, the world No. 41. Last year’s US Open finalist trailed 2-4 in the final set tiebreaker, before winning five of the next six points to scrape through.
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