Taiwanese No. 1 Lu Yen-hsun completed a brace of victories at the Aegon Open in Nottingham, England, on Tuesday by ousting 15th seed Andreas Seppi in the second round.
Lu began the day by finishing off his first-round match, held over from Monday due to rain, 6-4, 6-4 against Belgium’s Ruben Bemelmans, then he returned to the grass courts at the Nottingham Tennis Centre to defeat the Italian world No. 27 6-4, 6-3 in 1 hour, 12 minutes.
World No. 61 Lu, who now has a 3-2 career record against Seppi after winning his past three matches against the Italian, saved all three break points he faced and converted two of five, winning 64 of the 122 points contested.
Lu was due to take on third seed Feliciano Lopez in the third round late yesterday after the Spaniard eased past wild-card Taylor Harry Fritz of the US 6-3, 6-3 on Tuesday.
Top seed David Ferrer suffered a Wimbledon warm-up headache, losing to Marcos Baghdatis.
The Spanish world No. 7 emerged from his first outing on grass this year with a 6-2, 7-6 (7/4) defeat to the unseeded Cypriot.
Baghdatis bagged his first win against a top 10 player in two years by firing nine aces and converting more than 70 percent of his service points.
The 33-year-old Ferrer, winner of three ATP Tour titles this season, was making his first appearance at Nottingham in 11 years.
Ferrer, a French Open finalist in 2013, lost to Andy Murray in the quarter-finals of the French Open at Roland Garros at the start of the month.
He progressed to the quarter-finals at Wimbledon in 2013, where he came unstuck against Juan Martin del Potro.
While Ferrer heads off to the practice courts to continue his preparations for the All England Club, Baghdatis was looking forward to a third-round match with German teenager Alexander Zverev.
The 18-year-old progressed after ousting Brazilian 13th seed Thomaz Belluci 6-7 (7/9), 6-3, 6-4 in 2 hours, 25 minutes.
Also advancing to the third round on Tuesday were Simone Bolelli of Italy, eighth seed Adrian Mannarino of France, fourth seed Leonardo Mayer of Argentina, 16th seed Jiri Vesely of the Czech Republic, Denis Istomin of Uzbekistan, Sergiy Stakhovsky of Ukraine, seventh seed Dominic Thiem of Austria, Alexandr Dolgopolov of Ukraine, fifth seed Pablo Cuevas of Uruguay, 12th seed Sam Querrey of the US, 14th seed Joao Sousa of Portugal and second seed Gilles Simon of France.
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
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