World No. 1 Andy Murray was sent packing from the second round of the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, California, on Saturday after losing 6-4, 7-6 (7/5) to Canadian qualifier Vasek Pospisil.
Pospisil delivered the knockout punch in style, whipping a cross-court winner on his fourth match point in front of the near capacity crowd that included former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson.
Pospisil, ranked 129th, was rewarded for his aggressive approach, rushing the net whenever the opportunity arose and pouncing on Murray’s second serve.
Photo: AFP
“I knew I was a long shot. I’ve played Andy four times and didn’t win a set,” the 26-year-old told the Tennis Channel. “I felt like I had the ability to [win], but to actually go through is a whole new thing. I tried to bring different tactics ... versus the other times I played him. I didn’t want to give him the same look each time. I wanted to put pressure coming into the net, using my strength, which is my ability at the net and serving well.”
Pospisil joked that his lowly world ranking was due to a “mid-life crisis” that saw him endure a lean season last year after he had made the Wimbledon quarter-finals in 2015.
Earlier, Italian Fabio Fognini won a battle of expectant fathers when he beat Jo-Wilfried Tsonga 7-6 (7/4), 3-6, 6-4.
Unseeded Fognini survived a first-set tiebreak and a tense final set before upsetting the seventh-seeded Frenchman in a match that stretched nearly 2 hours, 30 minutes in the blazing afternoon sun.
“I am happy about my performance. It’s a good victory for sure,” Fognini told the Tennis Channel after beating Tsonga for the first time in five career meetings. “Today was really hot, so the ball was bouncing a lot. I love playing with sun and good weather.”
Fognini considered himself fortunate even to make it to the second round.
The Italian dropped the first set to love and was down 5-2 in the second of his first-round encounter with Russian Konstantin Kravchuk, before roaring back to win 0-6, 7-5, 6-4.
“It is a crazy sport,” Fognini said.
Fognini’s wife, 2015 US Open champion Flavia Pennetta, is expecting a child in late May, while Tsonga is also set to become a father next month.
In the women’s singles, Angelique Kerber breezed to a 6-2, 6-1 second-round victory over fellow German Andrea Petkovic.
Second seed Kerber broke Petkovic to open the match and needed only 58 minutes to claim the victory.
“It was not so easy [playing Petkovic],” Kerber said after the match. “We’ve known each other forever. It’s always tough to play against a friend.”
Fourth seed Simona Halep also won emphatically, 6-4, 6-1 over Donna Vekic.
Halep, the 2015 champion, broke her Croatian opponent no fewer than seven times.
“My serve is not that big, but I like to return. I’m really proud of it,” Romanian Halep said. “I’m not very powerful, but I have a little bit the technique and the angles. I love this place. I have great results here.”
While Kerber and Halep won in quick fashion, 12th seed Venus Williams beat Serbian Jelena Jankovic in a dramatic battle between former world No. 1s.
Jankovic raced through the first set and seemed poised for an upset, but the second-set tiebreak proved pivotal, as Williams survived, staving off three match points en route to a 1-6, 7-6 (7/5), 6-1 victory.
“It ain’t over till it’s over and I didn’t see no fat lady singing,” said Williams, who played with her left thigh heavily strapped.
In the second round of the doubles, Spain’s Lara Arruabarrena and Liang Chen of China ousted Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Kateryna Bondarenko of Ukraine 6-4, 2-6, 10-8 in 1 hour, 16 minutes.
Additional reporting by staff writer
TITLE CAMPAIGN: The victory sent the Monkeys to the Taiwan Series for the third time in the past four seasons as they seek their first championship since 2019 The stage is set for the Taiwan Series after the Rakuten Monkeys on Monday beat the Uni-President Lions 4-3 in Game 5 of the CPBL Challenger Series in Kaohsiung. The Monkeys, who entered the top of the ninth scoreless, tied the game with a three-run blast by Lin Chih-ping and scored the winning run in the 10th on an RBI single by Lin Li, a three-time batting champion in the CPBL. Both players entered the game as pinch hitters. “The coach told me to stay prepared as a pinch hitter in the later part of the game. My teammates had
The Ministry of Sports on Wednesday night called for the Chinese Taipei Football Association (CTFA) to address issues in Taiwanese soccer after national manager Huang Che-ming on Tuesday resigned following Taiwan’s elimination in AFC Asian Cup qualifiers. Taiwan on Tuesday were thrashed 6-1 by Thailand in their Group D tie at Taipei Municipal Stadium. Taiwan finished with no points, after losing all four of their matches, eliminating them from qualifying for the 2027 AFC Asian Cup. Huang made his surprise resignation at a post-match news conference, following three losses since he took over the team from English coach Gary White in August. Huang
For a second straight day, protests by La Liga players against staging a regular-season game in Miami, Florida, in December were censored or not fully broadcast for television audiences. The television feed of Barcelona’s home game against Girona switched right before kickoff to an exterior view of the stadium, which only showed part of the field from a distance. That impeded home audiences from seeing the teams’ players standing still for the first 15 seconds in opposition to La Liga’s plan to hold the Barcelona-Villarreal game across the Atlantic on Dec. 20. The broadcasts of the initial moments after kickoff of the
HIT AND RUN: Toronto manager John Schneider got his wish that his team ‘find some slug in the air out here,’ as the Blue Jays combined to total 611m of homers Tired in Toronto, the Blue Jays slugged in Seattle. Vladimir Guerrero Jr and George Springer on Wednesday woke up the Jays, as Toronto hit five home runs to rebound from an early deficit, routing the Mariners 13-4 and closing to 2-1 in the American League Championship Series (ALCS). Toronto had 18 hits — all within the first three pitches of each at-bat. “If they give us a first pitch, the pitch that we’re looking for, we’re going to attack and we’re going to be aggressive,” Guerrero said. Seattle starter George Kirby gave up eight of the hits. “I wasn’t really executing when they got
RSS