An irritated world No. 1 Caroline Wozniacki on Thursday progressed to the Qatar Open quarter-finals in a feisty match where she complained and apparently mocked her opponent Monica Niculescu’s grunting.
The Australian Open champion won 7-5, 6-1 against the Romanian — who had knocked out Maria Sharapova in a previous round — but was visibly agitated in the ninth game of the first set, complaining her opponent was making noises as the Dane was about to hit the ball.
Wozniacki was so upset about the sounds coming from the other side of the net that she complained to French umpire Emmanuel Joseph.
Photo: AFP
“It isn’t in the rule book that you are not allowed to grunt when the opposing player hits?” microphones caught her asking Joseph.
The umpire said he thought everything was “regular,” but Wozniacki added: “It’s the only way she can win.”
She then mimicked the grunts.
Afterward she complained that her opponent was “a player that tries to get into your head.”
She also told Danish TV that her opponent had used “unfair methods.”
“[I] just tried to let him know to pay attention to her grunting because she’ll hit the ball, and two seconds later when the ball is on my side and I’m right about to hit, she’ll start grunting and make a noise, and she will change the grunt according to what she feels like,” the Dane told reporters.
Asked if she thought her opponent was grunting deliberately, Wozniacki responded: “I think that she didn’t do it in the second set, so...”
The spat overshadowed a relatively routine victory for the 27-year-old.
She was next due to play former Australian Open champion Angelique Kerber in the last eight yesterday.
The German came from a set down to beat Johanna Konta 1-6, 6-1, 6-3.
The woman Wozniacki beat in Melbourne, Simona Halep, is also through after beating Anastasija Sevastova 6-4, 6-3, keeping alive the possibility of a replay of the Australian Open final.
Halep shrugged off concerns about an ankle injury which had kept her out of action since Melbourne going into the match.
She seemed relatively untroubled, breaking her opponent’s serve late in each set to advance to the last eight.
“I’m really glad that I could finish it in two sets and play like I played,” Halep said.
The world No 2 was due to play 18-year-old qualifier Catherine Bellis in the last eight after the American beat defending champion and world No. 5 Karolina Pliskova 7-6 (7/4), 6-3.
It was the first time the teenager had beaten anyone ranked in the top five.
“I think it’s definitely a milestone. It’s great,” Bellis said.
Garbine Muguruza, the world No. 4, breezed through beating Sorana Cirstea 6-0, 6-4 and was due to play France’s Caroline Garcia.
A resurgent Petra Kvitova beat world No. 3 Elina Svitolina 6-4, 7-5 to set up a quarter-final clash with another top-10 player, Germany’s Julia Goerges.
In the second round of the doubles, seventh seeds Chan Hao-ching of Taiwan and Yang Zhaoxuan of China fell to a 3-6, 6-4, 10-6 loss to Kateryna Bondarenko of Ukraine and Aleksandra Krunic of Serbia.
Additional reporting by staff writer
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