French Open champion Ana Ivanovic produced a maddeningly inconsistent display as she was stunned by Poland’s Agnieszka Radwanska 6-1, 3-6, 6-4 at the Italian Open WTA on Wednesday.
World No. 1 Dinara Safina almost joined Ivanovic on the scrap-heap, but she fought back from a double break down in the third set to beat Chinese 14th seed Zheng Jie 5-7, 6-1, 7-6 (7/3).
Fifth seed Ivanovic had a disastrous start but she regrouped and seemed to be cruising into the quarter-finals at 4-0 up in the third set after a run of winning 10 out of 13 games.
PHOTO: EPA
But just as her first set play had been terribly inconsistent, so her demons returned and 10th seed Radwanska reeled off the final six games to clinch the match.
Ivanovic, who has struggled with injury and form since her success at Roland Garros last June, has not won a tournament this year and reached only one final.
And this performance was typical of her erratic recent form, poor to begin with, then back in the swing of things before losing her touch again at the end.
PHOTO: EPA
Radwanska will face fourth seed Venus Williams in the last eight after the American labored to a 6-0, 6-7 (8/10), 6-4 win over unseeded Russian Anna Chakvetadze in two hours, 20 minutes.
The first set lasted only 23 minutes and world No. 5 Venus looked like she would stroll through, but Chakvetadze is a former world No. 5 herself and she gritted her teeth and fought back to take the five-time Wimbledon champion to the brink.
Safina, meanwhile, struggled to victory in two-and-a-half hours but came close to losing a see-saw match. She was broken four times in the first set before romping away with the second.
She was broken again in the opening game of the decider and when she was broken again for the seventh time in the match to go down 5-2, it looked as if an upset was on the cards.
But the top seeded Russian knuckled down and ground her way back into the match to force a tie-break.
Reigning two-time champion Jelena Jankovic barely had to break sweat as she coasted into the quarter-finals when Kateryna Bondarenko retired with an illness with the Serbian leading 6-1, 1-0.
■ESTORIL OPEN
AFP, ESTORIL, PORTUGAL
American James Blake gained a much-needed boost to his clay court campaign on Wednesday at the Estoril Open as he won his first match on the surface this season.
The world No. 16 defeated Portugal’s No. 1 player Federico Gil, 5-7, 6-4, 6-2, requiring a comeback and nearly two hours to bring his record for this year on the dirt to 1-2 as he reached the second round.
Nikolay Davydenko, the second seed, won his second match in as many days, defeating ailing former clay court master Juan Carlos Ferrero 7-5, 6-2.
Spaniard Oscar Hernandez knocked out struggling third seed David Ferrer 6-2, 6-4.
In women’s WTA play, Slovak Jarmila Groth upset top seed Iveta Benesova 7-5, 6-4, while defending champion Maria Kirilenko, the No. 2, stayed in the chase for another title, reaching the last eight with a 6-3, 6-0 win over Argentine Maria Salerni. The five other seeds on court all won their matches into the last eight.
■BMW OPEN
AP, MUNICH
Marin Cilic of Croatia won the first eight games and swept past Philipp Kohlschreiber 6-0, 6-4 on Wednesday to reach the quarter-finals of the BMW Open.
Mikhail Youzhny of Russia upset third-seeded Nicolas Almagro of Spain 7-6 (2), 6-4.
Sixth-seeded Nicolas Kiefer of Germany was also upset, losing to Jeremy Chardy of France 6-4, 7-6 (8).
■SERBIA OPEN
AP, BELGRADE, SERBIA
Top-seeded Novak Djokovic beat fellow Serb Janko Tipsarevic 6-2, 4-6, 6-0 on Wednesday to advance to the quarter-finals of the Serbia Open, the country’s first ever ATP Tour event.
Djokovic will next face another Serb in fifth-seeded Victor Troicki, who beat Marcel Granollers of Spain 6-3, 6-4.
Former European champions Celtic exited the UEFA Champions League in the qualifiers after a 3-2 penalty shoot-out defeat at Kazakhstan’s Kairat Almaty on Tuesday, following two goalless legs in the playoff tie. Kairat are to compete in the competition proper for the first time, while Norway’s Bodo/Glimt and Cyprus’s Pafos also secured debut appearances after coming through the playoffs. Celtic’s night ended in disappointment as they missed three penalties in the shoot-out, Daizen Maeda failing with the decisive spot-kick. The slugfest of a match went into extra-time with neither side finding the net and few overall chances, echoing the first
Rangers on Wednesday bowed out of the UEFA Champions League playoffs with a humiliating 6-0 defeat at the hands of Club Brugge which piles further pressure on head coach Russell Martin, while SL Benfica secured a place in the competition proper at the expense of Jose Mourinho’s Fenerbahce. The Glasgow giants traveled to Belgium right up against it after losing 3-1 at home in last week’s first leg, when they conceded three times in the opening 20 minutes. They never looked like turning the tie around as Club Brugge took the lead inside five minutes at the Jan Breydelstadion through Nicolo Tresoldi
Australian Alex de Minaur reached the second week of the US Open for the third year in a row with little fanfare on Saturday and said he intended to keep winning until the tournament organizers were forced to give him better billing. Despite being the eighth seed and a quarter-finalist last year at Flushing Meadows, De Minaur’s third-round match against German Daniel Altmaier was scheduled for Court 17 — the smallest of the four stadium venues in the precinct. “It is a little bit of a headscratcher for me. I’m not gonna lie,” he told reporters after progressing 6-7 (9/7), 6-3, 6-4,
Noah Lyles on Thursday warmed up for the upcoming athletics world championships by chasing down Olympic champion Letsile Tebogo to win the 200m at the Diamond League final. Lyles trailed Tebogo at the start, but gradually erased the deficit over the final 100m and pipped the Botswana sprinter to the line by centimeters. Lyles, the Olympic 100m champion and reigning world champion in both the 100m and 200m, clocked 19.74 seconds in a slight headwind. Tebogo was 0.02 seconds behind. It was Lyles’ sixth Diamond League title, a record for track athletes. “Six, that’s a big number,” Lyles said. “Shoot, that’s another record on
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