Caroline Wozniacki was the only player among the top five seeded women to reach the second round at the Generali Ladies in Linz, Austria, rallying to beat Mirjana Lucic-Baroni of Croatia 3-6, 7-6 (7/3), 6-4 on Wednesday.
Third seed Roberta Vinci of Italy lost her first-round match against Aleksandra Krunic of Serbia 6-1, 6-7 (3/7), 6-1.
Top seed Lucie Safarova and fourth seed Andrea Petkovic both lost on Tuesday, while fifth seed Anna Karolina Schmiedlova withdrew because of illness.
Sixth seed Camila Giorgi joined the exodus later on Wednesday in the second round as the Italian, who reached the final in Linz last year, was beaten by Margarita Gasparyan of Russia 6-3, 2-6, 6-3.
In the other second-round matches, Madison Brengle of the US missed six match points before beating Johanna Konta of Britain 6-3, 7-5.
In her fourth quarter-final of the season, Brengle is to take on Anna-Lena Friedsam of Germany, who defeated Andreea Mitu of Romania 7-5, 6-3.
World No. 11 Wozniacki, who is seeded second, went up 2-0 in the opening set, but won only two points in the next five games against Lucic-Baroni. She missed a set point at 5-4 in the second set, but turned the match around in the tiebreaker.
Wozniacki next faces Belgium’s Kirsten Flipkens for a place in the quarter-finals.
Krunic, who hit six aces, lost her opening service game against Vinci, but took 10 of the next 12 games for a 6-1, 4-2 lead.
The US Open finalist broke back and converted her first set point in the tiebreaker, but she did not recover from going 5-0 down in the final set.
World No. 99 Krunic improved to 3-0 against Vinci after also beating the Italian at Wimbledon and in Bucharest this year.
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
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