An injury-ravaged US Open men’s draw offers the best opportunity yet for a young pretender to claim a maiden Grand Slam crown, but in this most retro of seasons Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal will look to turn back time in New York.
With the physical demands of modern-day tennis taking its toll, the tournament is to start without four of the top 11 in the ATP rankings, including defending champion Stanislas Wawrinka, who ended his season early with a knee injury.
Two-time champion Novak Djokovic (elbow), 2014 runner-up Kei Nishikori (wrist) and Milos Raonic (wrist) are also absent, while 2012 champion Andy Murray and 2014 winner Marin Cilic have been sidelined by injuries since Wimbledon.
Photo: AP
Federer, looking to win three Grand Slam titles in the same year for the first time since 2007, withdrew from Cincinnati with a back niggle and while Nadal, who returned this week to world No. 1, is fit, his form of late has been patchy.
All the more reason that Alexander Zverev, Dominic Thiem and Nick Kyrgios — to name but three — will be relishing seizing a golden opportunity in the Big Apple.
Of those, Germany’s 20-year-old Zverev looks the best bet to shake it up after rising to sixth in the world after beating Federer at the Rogers Cup in Montreal — the biggest title so far for the 1.98m powerhouse.
Photo: AFP
“Is Zverev ready to step up best of five?” four-time Flushing Meadows champion John McEnroe, part of ESPN’s commentary team, said this week. “If he is he’s got a great chance to step forward and get to the final, at least the semis.”
Unpredictable Australian Kyrgios has shown signs of delivering on his potential this year, most recently when beating Nadal in the quarter-finals in Cincinnati, Ohio, before losing to Bulgaria’s Grigor Dimitrov, another US Open title candidate, in the final.
“You can say he’s slowly hopefull,y but surely going in the right direction,” McEnroe said of the 22-year-old Kyrgios.
Austrian Thiem appears to have left his best tennis on the European clay, struggling on the North American hardcourts.
Jack Sock, John Isner and Sam Querrey will lead the American challenge in the men’s tournament — hoping to end a six-year wait for a men’s quarter-finalist for the host nation.
“I don’t see any of them winning it. I see all of them being dangerous,” McEnroe said.
However, the 36-year-old Federer, seeded third, will be most people’s title pick having produced a stunning year since returning from a six-month lay-off in January — compiling a 35-3 record.
WINSTON-SALEM OPEN
Reuters
Damir Dzumhur became Bosnia’s first player to reach an ATP Tour final at the Winston-Salem Open on Friday and was glad to reward compatriots at home who stayed up late to watch him overhaul Kyle Edmund.
The 25-year-old Dzumhur recovered from a poor start to beat the Briton 1-6, 7-5, 6-3 and faces Spain’s Roberto Bautista Agut for a chance to become the Balkan nation’s first Tour winner.
“I think everybody in Bosnia is still awake and watching me, which makes me really proud for my country,” Dzumhur said in comments published on the ATP Web site. “For such a small country as Bosnia, it’s a really big result.”
“It’s going to be a big thing for me, for my country, as the only player in the Top 100 making great results,” he said.
“So I’m proud of my country and proud of myself and it’s going to be a good day tomorrow [yesterday],” he added.
Bautista Agut easily accounted for Germany’s Jan-Lennard Struff 6-2, 6-4 in the other semi-final.
CONNECTICUT OPEN
AP, NEW HAVEN, Connecticut
Australia’s Daria Gavrilova was to play for her first career title yesterday at the Connecticut Open.
The demonstrative 23-year-old upset top-seeded defending champion Agnieszka Radwanska of Poland 6-4, 6-4 in Friday night’s semi-finals.
She faces Dominika Cibulkova for the championship of the last WTA tuneup before the US Open, which is to begin tomorrow.
The second-seeded Cibulkova beat qualifier Elise Mertens of Belgium 6-1, 6-3 in the afternoon.
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