Novak Djokovic’s third-round struggle with defending champion Grigor Dimitrov was halted by rain on Thursday, forcing the pair to come back yesterday at the Western & Southern Open in Cincinnati.
Officials called a halt to a frustrating day in which Roger Federer was never able to take the court for his match against Leonardo Mayer.
Djokovic is vying to break through for a first Cincinnati win after coming up empty in five finals.
He lost the first set 6-2 and won the second 6-3 when rain stopped the contest for 90 minutes.
When play resumed, Djokovic edged ahead 2-1 in the third, but another storm rolled in and organizers called a halt.
Cincinnati remains the only one of the nine Masters 1000 events that the Serb star has not won. He has lifted trophies at least twice at each of the other eight events in the ATP series.
Earlier, Simona Halep and Juan Martin del Potro at last managed to complete weather-delayed second-round victories.
World No. 1 Halep took advantage of an early afternoon respite from the weather to finish a 4-6, 6-3, 6-3 victory over Ajla Tomljanovic.
Halep, clearly frustrated when the match was halted at 3-3 in the third on Wednesday night, won three straight games to finish off the victory in 10 minutes — just in time for drizzle to set in.
Argentina’s world No. 3 del Potro had played just six points in the first game of his postponed match against Chung Hyeon before the rain came again.
However, the weather cleared long enough for del Potro to polish off a 6-2, 6-3 win over the South Korean to set up a meeting with Australian Nick Kyrgios for a place in the quarter-finals — a match also rescheduled for yesterday.
Two men’s quarter-finalists were decided as Milos Raonic defeated Denis Shapovalov 7-6 (8/6), 6-4. Pablo Carreno Busta also advanced, beating Robin Haase of the Netherlands 6-4, 6-2.
In the women’s third round, reigning US Open champion Sloane Stephens was eliminated, while Madison Keys moved on.
Belgian Elise Mertens scored the second top-five win of her career, beating Stephens 7-6 (10/8), 6-2, while Keys rallied to defeat fourth seed Angelique Kerber 2-6, 7-6 (7/3), 6-4.
Keys next faces Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus, who upset French sixth seed Caroline Garcia 6-4, 3-6, 7-5.
Petra Kvitova reached the last eight with a 6-4, 6-2 win over France’s Kristina Mladenovic.
“I just need to get out there and really fight, I was telling myself to fight,” the two-time Wimbledon champion said. “I did a lot of talking to myself today, pushing myself to just go for it. I’m glad that in the important points I played aggressively.”
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