Taiwanese No. 1 Lu Yen-hsun completed the first part of a double shift at the Aegon Open in Nottingham, England, yesterday after his first-round match was held up by rain on Monday evening.
World No. 61 Lu was leading 6-4, 4-2 when the match was suspended on Monday, but he returned to the Nottingham Tennis Centre grass courts yesterday morning and sealed a 6-4, 6-4 victory over Belgium’s Ruben Bemelmans inside 10 minutes.
Lu saved four of five break-point chances and converted three of six to wrap up the match in 1 hour, 14 minutes on Court Three, winning 67 of the 121 points contested.
Lu was due to return to Court One later yesterday to play his second-round match against world No. 27 Andreas Seppi of Italy, who as the 15th seed received a bye in the first round of the final warm-up tournament ahead of Wimbledon, which starts on Monday next week.
Aljaz Bedene warmed up for his first Wimbledon since switching nationality to British by beating Diego Schwartzman in one of just five completed first-round matches on Monday.
Slovenia-born Bedene, who was granted British citizenship in March, won 6-1, 6-7(5/7), 6-2 against his Argentine opponent and was due to play eighth seed Adrian Mannarino of France in the second round yesterday.
Santiago Giraldo of Colombia won 6-1, 1-6, 6-1 against Andreas Haider-Maurer of Austria, while Simone Bolelli, Malek Jaziri and Dudi Sela were all straight-sets winners before rain washed out play.
The top seeds were due on court yesterday, with David Ferrer, Feliciano Lopez and Gilles Simon all starting their title challenges. Ferrer was set to play Marcos Baghdatis in the headline match.
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