Top-seeded Andy Murray stayed on course for a fourth title at Queen’s Club by overcoming Gilles Muller of Luxembourg 3-6, 7-6 (7/2), 6-4 on Friday to reach the semi-finals.
Like in previous matches this week, Murray struggled early against a solid opponent. Muller broke to lead 3-1 and Murray failed to convert two break points in the next game.
The second set then went with serve until Murray finally raised his game and was able to dominate the tiebreaker.
Photo: Reuters
He then broke early in the third set, which turned out to be enough to decide the match.
“You need a bit of luck sometimes when you’re playing against someone who serves like Gilles,” Murray said. “I started to read the serve a little bit better in that tiebreak and the end of the second set. That was when the match changed a little bit.”
Murray next faces Serbia’s Viktor Troicki, who defeated American John Isner 7-6 (7/5), 6-3.
Troicki, who lost in the final at Stuttgart to Rafael Nadal last week, kept Isner under pressure with strong serves and did not face a break point throughout the match. Isner needed to fight off three break points in the first set before conceding the tiebreaker and he faced another seven in the second set before giving up the eighth as Troicki broke to lead 5-3.
Earlier, Gilles Simon reached his third semi-final of the year by eliminating third-seeded Milos Raonic of Canada 4-6, 6-3, 7-5.
The seventh-seeded Frenchman surrendered the opening set on a single break of serve at 1-1, but in a 12-minute game at 2-2 in the second set he fought off three break points before breaking for a 4-2 lead.
Neither player earned a break point in the final set until at 5-5, when a netted backhand gave Simon the decisive break. He needed five match points to close it out in 2 hours, 18 minutes.
“I couldn’t return any serve in for one set and a half,” Simon said. “I had a lot of trouble to win my service game. I was under pressure every time. And then I don’t know how it turns, a bit out of nowhere.”
Despite the loss, Raonic was happy with his first week of competition since undergoing minor surgery on his right foot to correct a pinched nerve.
“The tennis I thought was great,” Raonic said. “The only thing I really have to be disappointed with is I wish I would have sort of gutted it out a bit more, tried to play on my terms. I was waiting for him too much and I let him dictate.”
Simon next faces South Africa’s Kevin Anderson, who beat Spain’s Guillermo Garcia-Lopez 7-6 (9/7), 7-5.
Anderson, who saved a match point against Lleyton Hewitt in the first round, hit 18 aces, but failed to earn a break point until leading 6-5 in the second set.
There were just two other break points in the match, which Garcia-Lopez failed to convert in the opening game of the second set.
Taiwanese world No. 1 women’s doubles star Hsieh Su-wei on Saturday overcame a first-set loss to win her opening match at the Madrid Open. Top seeds Hsieh and partner Elise Mertens of Belgium, with whom she last month won her fourth Indian Wells women’s doubles title, bounced back from a rocky first set to beat Asia Muhammad of the US and Aldila Sutjiadi of Indonesia 2-6, 6-4, 10-2. Hsieh and Mertens were next to face Heather Watson of the UK and Xu Yifan of China in the round of 16. Thirty-eight-year-old Hsieh last month reclaimed her world No. 1 spot after her Indian
EYES ON THE PRIZE: Armed with three solid men’s singles shuttlers and doubles Olympic champions, Taiwan aim to make their first Thomas Cup semi-final, Chou Tien-chen said Taiwanese badminton star Tai Tzu-ying yesterday quickly dispatched Malaysia’s Goh Jin Wei in straight sets, while her male counterpart Chou Tien-chen beat Germany’s Kai Schaefer, as Taiwan’s women’s and men’s teams won their Group B opening rounds of the TotalEnergies BWF Thomas and Uber Cup Finals in Chengdu, China. World No. 5 Tai beat Goh 21-19, 22-20 in a speedy 33 minutes, her fourth straight victory over the world No. 24 shuttler since they first faced each other in the quarter-finals of the 2018 Malaysia Open, where Tai went on to win the women’s singles title. Malaysia followed up Tai’s opening victory
Chen Yi-tung (陳奕通) secured a historic Olympic berth on Sunday by winning the senior men’s foil event at the 2024 Asia Oceania Zonal Olympic Fencing Qualifiers in United Arab Emirates. Chen defeated Samuel Elijah of Singapore 15-4 in the final in Dubai to secure the only wild card in the event, making him the first male Olympian fencer from Taiwan in 36 years and only the sixth Taiwanese fencer to ever qualify for the quadrennial event. The last appearance by a Taiwanese male fencer at the Olympics was in 1988, when Wang San-tsai (王三財) and Cheng Ming-hsiang (鄭明祥) competed in Seoul. The
A soccer jersey carrying a national map including disputed Western Sahara has become a hot commodity in Morocco after a diplomatic dispute with Algeria. Retailers said RS Berkane jerseys have been flying off the shelves after a Confederation of African Football (CAF) Cup match against Algerian club USM Alger was canceled last month over the jerseys. “We are overwhelmed by the influx of messages and requests,” said Brahim Rabii, representative of the official RS Berkane jersey distributor. Algeria broke off diplomatic relations with Morocco in 2021, partly over the issue of Western Sahara. The former Spanish colony is largely controlled by Morocco, but claimed