Maria Sharapova remained on course for consecutive Madrid Open titles when she recovered from dropping the second set to beat Caroline Wozniacki 6-1, 3-6, 6-3 yesterday and book a spot in the semi-finals.
Dane Wozniacki, the fifth seed and a Madrid finalist in 2009, had yet to drop a set on the clay in the Magic Box arena on her way to the last eight, but had her service broken five times by third-seeded Russian Sharapova.
Sharapova will return to No. 2 in the world behind American Serena Williams if she reaches the final.
Third seed Sharapova went two-and-a-half hours before seeing off Frenchwoman Caroline Garcia 6-2, 4-6, 7-5 on Wednesday.
In the men’s singles yesterday, Andy Murray made the third round with a 6-4, 3-6, 6-0 win over Philipp Kohlschreiber in a match that ended at 3am.
The second seeded Murray had already defeated his German opponent in three sets in the rain-delayed Munich Open final on Monday to register his first claycourt title.
His latest meeting with Kohlschreiber only got underway at just after 1am after a succession of marathon matches at the joint ATP-WTA tournament had thrown the schedule into chaos.
The Murray-Kohlschreiber clash was not the latest finish to an ATP World Tour tie. That honor belongs to Benjamin Becker and Jiri Novak, who completed a match at the 2006 Japan Open at 3:25am.
Murray will have to recover quickly as he is due to face Spain’s Marcel Granollers later yesterday for a place in the quarter-finals.
However, Granollers may not be feeling particularly fresh as he needed 3 hours, 20 minutes to defeat French 13th seed Gael Monfils, 7-6 (8/6), 6-7 (7/9), 6-4.
On Wednesday, Australia young gun Nick Kyrgios knocked top seed Roger Federer out with a stunning 6-7 (2/7), 7-6 (7/5), 7-6 (14/12) victory.
Kyrgios, who beat Rafael Nadal at Wimbledon last year, sent down 22 aces to Federer’s 15 and next faces John Isner of the US.
Women’s top seed Serena Williams survived a marathon three-setter to reach the quarter-finals.
Williams saved three match points and needed two-and-three-quarter hours to take her undefeated record this season to 23-0, making the most of a late serving collapse from former No. 1 Victoria Azarenka to win 7-6 (7/5), 3-6, 7-6 (7/1).
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