Rajeev Ram continued his upset run at the Hall of Fame Tennis Championships ATP grass-court tournament on Thursday, saving two match points against French fifth seed Adrian Mannarino to book his semi-final berth.
The 161st-ranked Ram, who ousted top-seeded John Isner of the US in the first round, needed two hours and 34 minutes to get past Mannarino 2-6, 7-6 (10/8), 7-6 (7/2).
He trailed an early break in the third before battling back to win the tiebreaker.
“Mannarino is such a tough opponent, because he absorbs pace so well,” said Ram, who won his lone ATP title at Newport in 2009.
“I could hit through the court a bit here with my forehand, so I tried to find a way to break him down,” added Ram, who is to face Australian southpaw John-Patrick Smith for a place in the final.
Smith saved all three break points he faced in beating Japan’s Tatsuma Ito 6-3, 6-7 (2/7), 6-3.
The remaining two quarter-finals were scheduled to be played yesterday, with second-seeded Croatian Ivo Karlovic taking on Germany’s Dustin Brown and fourth-seeded Jack Sock of the US facing Czech qualifier Jan Hernych.
Brown lined up his clash with Karlovic by finishing off a rain-disrupted second-round match against the US’ Sam Querrey 6-2, 4-6, 6-4.
Brown — who shocked Rafael Nadal in the second round at Wimbledon — was up a break in the third set when play resumed on Thursday morning.
“It wasn’t easy coming back today, knowing all I had to do was to hold serve,” he said. “I definitely hit a lot of serves during my warm-up. Having been on the tour for a while, I’ve run into these types of situations before.”
“There’s no use thinking about whether we could have finished the match last night. All you can do is to stick with it and warm up the serve. I’m happy that I kept it together,” he said.
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