SOCCER
Las Palmas fire coach
UD Las Palmas have become the first La Liga club to fire their coach this season after Paco Herrera paid the price for Sunday’s 4-0 thrashing at Getafe, which left the Canary Islands club second from bottom. Herrera, 61, who has also had stints in charge at clubs including Real Zaragoza and RC Celta de Vigo and was an assistant to Rafael Benitez at Liverpool, helped Las Palmas win promotion to Spain’s top flight last term after a 13-year absence. However, they have only five points from eight matches and the club said on their Web site they needed a “boost” after the woeful showing against Getafe. There was no immediate word on a successor. Las Palmas have not had a sustained run in the top flight since the 1980s and were playing in the third tier of Spanish soccer less than a decade ago. The club said they wished Herrera “every professional success in the future, conscious of the fact that he wrote one of the happiest pages in the history of this club.”
SOCCER
Sporting, Granada draw 3-3
Real Sporting de Gjion scored two late goals after Granada had been reduced to nine men to claim a dramatic 3-3 draw in Gijon, Spain, in La Liga on Monday. Sporting trailed by two goals until Nacho Cases gave them hope with a goal in the 88th minute after Granada lost Hugo Miguel to his second booking. That sparked a furious push by the hosts, and after Granada’s Matheus was dismissed for a second bookable offense, substitute Miguel Herrero netted the equalizer six minutes into second-half stoppage-time. Granada squandered a great performance by forward Isaac Success, who netted his side’s second and also played a part in two more goals as the visitors built a two-goal lead.
TENNIS
Karlovic beats Seppi
Ivo Karlovic added 17 aces to his all-time record total while defeating Andreas Seppi of Italy 7-6 (7/5), 6-3 in the first round of the Erste Bank Open on Monday. The seventh-seeded Croat held serve throughout and broke Seppi at 3-2 in the second set for the only break in the match. Karlovic has now hit 10,306 aces in his career. Earlier, Jiri Vesely of Czech Republic defeated Austrian wild-card Gerald Melzer 6-4, 6-3. The 40th-ranked Vesely dropped serve once in the opening set on the only break point he faced. He will next play second seed Kevin Anderson or Andreas Haider-Maurer of Austria. Radek Stepanek won another Czech-Austrian duel, beating Dennis Novak 6-4, 6-3, while Lukas Rosol became the third Czech player to advance after defeating Yuichi Sugita of Japan 6-4, 7-6 (7/2). Also, Ernests Gulbis of Latvia ended his five-match losing streak by defeating Austrian qualifier Lucas Miedler 6-3, 2-6, 6-3. The 522nd-ranked Miedler appeared in his first main-draw match at ATP level. David Ferrer of Spain is the top-seeded player at the 41st edition of the Austrian indoor event.
GOLF
Spieth to headline Singapore
Organizers say PGA Tour Player of the Year Jordan Spieth will headline the Singapore Open in January, when the tournament returns after a three-year absence. Spieth, who won this year’s Masters and US Open, will be looking to join a list of big-name Singapore Open winners, including three-time title holder Adam Scott, Ian Poulter, Angel Cabrera and defending champion Matteo Manassero. Spieth, 22, will play in Singapore for the first time. “I know the SMBC Singapore Open is one of Asia’s leading events and I couldn’t be more excited to add it to my 2016 playing schedule,” 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