Ivo Karlovic was not sure he could or should try to defend his title at the Delray Beach Open.
An old knee injury had flared up during the Australian Open last month, forcing the 36-year-old Croatian to retire from his first-round match and sidelining him from the practice courts ever since.
Although Karlovic gamely tried to serve his way past 27-year-old qualifier John-Patrick Smith of Australia, his rust was evident and the third seed was ousted 6-3, 3-6, 6-2 in the opening round on Monday.
The win was just the fourth main-draw victory of Smith’s career and his second-best win. A four-time All-American at the University of Tennessee, Smith upset world No. 25 Bernard Tomic en route to the semi-finals in Newport, Rhode Island, last year.
Playing with a fierce nighttime wind whipping through his shirt and his strokes, Karlovic served 21 aces, but also hit 11 double faults, including four in the crucial fourth game of the third set. He saved two match points, but Smith closed out the win with a precision passing shot.
Earlier in the day, fourth seed Grigor Dimitrov persevered through a four-hour rain delay and wind gusts greater than 50kph to defeat Israeli Dudi Sela 6-4, 6-2. Also advancing was eighth-seeded Frenchman Adrian Mannarino, a semi-finalist last year, who dispatched Tunisian Malek Jaziri 1-6, 6-3, 6-1.
So difficult were the conditions that Dimitrov and Sela continually found themselves catching errant ball tosses and chasing looping shots that started as forehands, but blew to the backhand side.
“It was rough, very hard to control the ball,” Dimitrov said. “Things were flying all over the court. You just have to prepare mentally and keep moving your feet.”
Dimitrov was playing in his first ATP Tour tournament since a third-round loss to Roger Federer at the Australian Open. Two of his three losses this year have come at the hands of Federer, the man to whom he is most often compared.
The seeming ease with which Dimitrov strokes the ball earned him the nickname “Baby Fed” when he first turned professional in 2008.
After beating Andy Murray to reach the semi-finals at Wimbledon in 2014, Dimitrov climbed to a career-high eighth in the world, but he faltered last year, split with his coach and his girlfriend, Maria Sharapova, and ended the year at No. 28.
“I’m happy with last year,” Dimitrov said. “I know people don’t expect me to say that, but I learned a lot. It was a wake-up call.”
OPEN 13
AP, MARSEILLE, France
Sixth seed David Goffin of Belgium breezed past South Korean Chung Hyeon 6-3, 6-1 to reach the second round of the Open 13 on Monday.
Eighth seed Benoit Paire also advanced with a 6-4, 7-5 defeat of Simone Bolelli.
Paire, one of the 10 Frenchmen competing in the singles draw in Marseille, converted four of 16 break points. He next plays either Nicolas Mahut, who reached the semi-finals in Rotterdam at the weekend, or qualifier Vincent Millot.
“I’m really happy to win this match and the way I behaved on court,” Paire said. “I hope that I will keep on winning to regain confidence in my game.”
Robin Haase needed just 63 minutes to dispatch Joao Sousa 6-4, 6-0. Up next for the Dutchman is fourth seed Marin Cilic.
In the first round of the doubles, Taiwanese duo Hsieh Cheng-peng and Yi Chu-huan fell to a 6-4, 7-5 loss to Marin Draganja of Croatia and Julian Knowle of Austria.
Additional reporting by staff writer
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