TENNIS
Hsieh wins at Jiangxi Open
Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei on Monday advanced to the second round at the hard-court WTA Jiangxi Open in Nanchang, China, yesterday, defeating Gao Xinyu of China 6/3, 7/6 (7/4) in their first-round match. In the doubles, Taiwan’s Chang Kai-chen and partner Shuko Aoyama of Japan lost to Chinese pairing Chen Liang and Ye Qiuyu 7-5, 6-2. Chang is also to play in the singles against China’s Zhang Shuai on center court today. Second seed singles player Peng Shuai of China won her first set against Japan’s Kurumi Nara 7-5 before losing the second 4-6 then clinching the victory with a 6-3 win. Nara had battled fiercely with her opponent, hitting a tricky drop shot for a hard-won point. China’s Wang Qiang bested Britain’s Harriet Dart in two sets, while Han Xinyun of China beat Thailand’s Peangtarn Plipuech.
TENNIS
Mervyn Rose dies at 87
Mervyn Rose, who won two Grand Slam singles titles and two Davis Cups before going into coaching and working with stars including Billie Jean King and Margaret Court, has died. He was 87. Tennis Australia issued a statement on Monday confirming the death of Rose, a feisty left-hander who won the Australian Open in 1954 and the French Open in 1958 before turning pro. Rose also won men’s doubles titles at the Australian and US Opens, as well as at Wimbledon. He was represented Australia in Davis Cup between 1950 and 1957 and was part of the team who beat the US for the titles in 1951 and 1957. Tennis Australia paid tribute to Rose as a player and coach, saying he “effortlessly made the transition to coaching [and] worked with some of the greats.” Rose was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 2001.
BASKETBALL
Rose linked to Cavaliers
Free agent point guard Derrick Rose was expected to sign a one-year, US$2.1 million deal with the Cleveland Cavaliers, US media reported on Monday. Rose, the youngest player to win the NBA Most Valuable Player award when he took the trophy in 2011, met with Cavs officials in Ohio on Monday. Cleveland.com reported he had agreed to join the Eastern Conference champions “after spending the day discussing how the team will return to the Finals without Kyrie Irving.” ESPN, citing league sources, also reported that Rose and the Cavs had come to terms.
ICE HOCKEY
Lost ring returned
A scuba-diving treasure hunter who found an American Hockey League Hall of Fame ring in one of New York’s Finger Lakes has returned it to its owner. Auburn, New York, resident Gary Gavurnik returned the prized ring to former star Dick Gamble on Monday. Gavurnik found it with a metal detector in Canandaigua Lake during the Fourth of July weekend. The 88-year-old Canadian-born Gamble starred for the Rochester Americans and retired in the 1969-1970 season. He was inducted into the AHL Hall of Fame in 2007. He gave the ring to his son, Craig, who wore it every day for seven years before losing it in the lake. He never told his father and ordered a replacement. Craig said the return was “fantastic.”
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