Britain’s Kyle Edmund won nine of the final 10 games to upset US top seed Jack Sock 6-4, 6-1 on Friday and reach the BB&T Open semi-finals.
Edmund, a 22-year-old born in South Africa, advanced to his second career ATP semi-final after last year’s European Open in Antwerp, Belgium. He has yet to reach an ATP final.
Sock broke Edmund in the seventh game, but the Briton broke back in the eighth and 10th games, capturing the first set in 59 minutes, then took only 29 more to finish off the match.
Photo: EPA
Blocking the world No. 45’s path to the championship match of the US Open hard-court tuneup in Atlanta was fourth seed Ryan Harrison of the US, who ousted 461st-ranked US wild-card Christopher Eubanks 6-1, 6-2.
Harrison, ranked 42nd, won his only ATP title in Memphis, Tennessee, in February.
Yesterday’s other semi-final was between third seed Gilles Muller and US second seed John Isner, after Muller defeated US qualifier Tommy Paul 6-3, 6-1 and Isner fired 13 aces to oust Slovakia’s Lukas Lacko 7-5, 6-4.
Photo: AFP
Lacko’s second double fault of the match gave Isner the first break chance of the second set and the American took advantage.
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