Gilles Simon on Monday rallied to beat Julien Benneteau 4-6, 6-3, 6-2 in an all-French match in the first round of the BNP Paribas Masters.
In their ninth career meeting dating back to 2007, Simon cracked Benneteau’s resistance in a tense first game of the deciding set and won the next three to go 4-0 up.
“Julien’s a very good player and you always have to be wary of him,” Simon said. “It was a tough match and I’m glad I reacted well to get through.”
Photo: EPA
Benneteau had won three of their past four meetings, but Simon is now 5-4 ahead.
He saved seven of eight break points and broke Benneteau three times — twice in the deciding set.
Simon, ranked 23rd, this season reached the Shanghai Rolex Masters semi-finals and the Miami Open quarter-finals.
“I’m trying to finish the season strongly,” 31-year-old Simon said. “It’s always good to finish well to get things going for next year.”
He next faces 10th-seeded Roberto Bautista Agut and leads the Spaniard 3-1 overall.
Bautista Agut is one of seven players in Paris vying for the two remaining spots at the season-ending ATP World Tour Finals in London.
Dominic Thiem and Marin Cilic, who won the Swiss Indoors on Sunday, were in the final two places heading to Paris.
Tomas Berdych, David Goffin, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, Lucas Pouille and Bautista Agut are the other contenders and are also playing in Paris.
Berdych, who won the 2005 Paris Masters, must reach the semi-finals to qualify. He was yesterday to face Portugal’s Joao Sousa and could then face Bautista Agut in the third round.
Tsonga faces Spaniard Albert Ramos-Vinolas, who downed 36-year-old Frenchman Stephane Robert 6-1, 6-4 in Monday’s last match.
Earlier, Frenchman Benoit Paire’s 14 aces were not enough as Italian Paolo Lorenzi won 6-4, 7-6 (7/4).
Lorenzi took his only chance on Paire’s serve in the first set and saved the one break point he faced in the second. He next plays 16th-seeded Pablo Cuevas of Uruguay.
Pablo Carreno Busta of Spain downed Italian Fabio Fognini 6-3, 6-1 and was yesterday to face fourth-seeded Milos Raonic of Canada, who is feeling the effects of an ankle injury that forced him to withdraw ahead of his China Open semi-final three weeks ago.
Marcos Baghdatis of Cyprus, an Australian Open finalist 10 years ago, won 6-2, 6-4 against Paul-Henri Mathieu and next faces 14th-seeded Grigor Dimitrov of Bulgaria.
The US’ Steve Johnson had eight aces in a 6-4, 7-5 win against Guido Pella of Argentina, setting up a match against 12th-seeded Frenchman Richard Gasquet.
Sousa saved all six chances on his serve as he beat Italian Andreas Seppi 6-4, 6-4, while German Jan-Lennard Struff did not concede a single chance on serve in a 6-1, 6-1 win against Illya Marchenko.
Spaniard Fernando Verdasco was up 6-2, 3-2 against Robin Haase when the Dutchman retired with a left hip injury.
Verdasco is up against second-ranked Andy Murray, who will move to the top of the world rankings if he wins the tournament and Novak Djokovic does not reach the final.
Djokovic, whose 66 career titles include a record 30 in Masters tournaments, is in pursuit of his fourth straight title in the Paris tournament and fifth overall.
The Serbian opens against either Nicolas Almagro of Spain or Gilles Muller, who were to play their first-round match late yesterday.
Djokovic leads Almagro 4-0 and Muller 3-0 in career meetings, while Murray is 11-1 against Verdasco.
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