World No. 7 Belinda Bencic won her first match of the season yesterday, but there was agony for Alex de Minaur as the men’s top seed pulled out of the Adelaide International.
The Swiss 22-year-old, a wild-card entry who lost her opening match of the year last week in Shenzhen, beat Daria Kasatkina of Russia 6-4, 6-4.
Bencic, who had lost her past two matches against the qualifier, overcame hot conditions at Memorial Drive as she makes final preparations for next week’s Australian Open.
She survived a first set against Kasatkina featuring five breaks of serve and secured her second-round place with a break in the final game of the second.
“It was very difficult, but I like the heat and I’m happy to be here for the first time,” Bencic said. “Her game is really tough, it doesn’t match up with mine. I had to work hard.”
Russia’s Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, American Danielle Collins and Croat Donna Vekic were among other women to clear the first hurdle.
In the men’s draw Britain’s Dan Evans beat Argentine Juan Ignacio Londero 6-2, 6-4, while Jeremy Chardy overcame fellow Frenchman Gilles Simon 6-3, 7-5.
A devastated De Minaur withdrew due to an abdominal injury, casting doubt over his fitness for the first major of the season.
“I re-aggravated an abdominal injury and have had to withdraw,” said De Minaur, who had an intense week leading Australia at the ATP Cup. “It’s devastating, Adelaide has been part of my schedule for a long time.”
ASB CLASSIC
AP, AUCKLAND, New Zealand
Defending champion Tennys Sandgren of the US moved into the second round of the ASB Classic, beating New Zealand doubles specialist Michael Venus 6-4, 6-3.
Sandgren won his maiden ATP title in Auckland last year, beating Briton Cameron Norrie in the final. He looked strong yesterday with 15 aces in a 70-minute win.
Venus is ranked 10th in the world in doubles, but was playing his first singles match since a Davis Cup tie in 2018.
In other first-round matches, Brazilian qualifier Thiego Montiero beat Cameron Norrie 7-6 (7/3), 6-2, while Hubert Hurkacz of Poland advanced with a 7-5, 6-3 win over Lorenzo Sonego.
WTA Hobart
AFP, HOBART, Australia
Kristyna Pliskova yesterday advanced to the second round at the WTA Hobart International, at which Taiwanese sisters Chan Hao-ching and Latisha Chan are to play in the doubles.
Pliskova beat Nina Stojanovic 1-6, 6-4, 6-3.
The Chans are to play Ukraine’s Kateryna Bondarenko and Sharon Fichman of Canada in the round of 16 today.
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