Ana Ivanovic will hope to celebrate her birthday by successfully defending her Tournament of Champions title after fending off a second-set fightback from Nadia Petrova in the semi-finals yesterday.
The Serbian won 6-1, 7-5 and will face Spain’s Anabel Medina Garrigues in the final today, her 24th birthday.
Medina Garrigues progressed when Sabine Lisicki of Germany retired with a back injury with the Spaniard leading 6-3, 4-6, 4-0.
Photo: EPA
Ivanovic made a perfect start, giving up just three points in the opening four games, as her aggressive baseline play left her Russian opponent reeling.
After claiming the first set, Ivanovic broke for 1-0 in the second and then held three points for a 3-0 lead before Petrova finally managed to work her way into the match.
As Ivanovic failed to maintain her formidable performance, Petrova settled and engaged her opponent in spectacular rallies, which several times led to Ivanovic throwing herself to the ground in search of a winner.
Three consecutive breaks put the players level at 3-3 and Ivanovic then had to fight off a set point at 5-4, firing an impressing backhand winner down the line.
In a dramatic finale, Ivanovic held for 5-5 and then broke to move ahead before serving out the match after the Russian had almost leveled again.
“I played really well from the beginning,” Ivanovic told reporters. “Then that game at 2-0 [in the second set], she really raised her game and went for more shots and made less errors and was serving bigger.”
“Not breaking her then was kind of a turning point for her a little bit and then I played a bad game to lose my serve. That was crucial and then we had a bit of a fight,” she added.
Lisicki looked flat right from the start against Medina Garrigues and midway through the second set she was clearly in pain. She left the court for several minutes for treatment after breaking to lead 4-3.
When she returned, Lisicki won two of the next three games to take the match into a third set but, after earning just two points in the first four games, she quit at 30-30 in the fifth.
Bayer 04 Leverkusen go into today’s match at TSG 1899 Hoffenheim stung from their first league defeat in 16 months. Leverkusen were beaten 3-2 at home by RB Leipzig before the international break, the first loss since May last year for the reigning league and cup champions. While any defeat, particularly against a likely title rival, would have disappointed coach Xabi Alonso, the way in which it happened would be most concerning. Just as they did in the Supercup against VfB Stuttgart and in the league opener to Borussia Moenchengladbach, Leverkusen scored first, but were pegged back. However, while Leverkusen rallied late to
If all goes well when the biggest marathon field ever gathered in Australia races 42km through the streets of Sydney on Sunday, World Marathon Majors (WMM) will soon add a seventh race to the elite series. The Sydney Marathon is to become the first race since Tokyo in 2013 to join long-established majors in New York, London, Boston, Berlin and Chicago if it passes the WMM assessment criteria for the second straight year. “We’re really excited for Sunday to arrive,” race director Wayne Larden told a news conference in Sydney yesterday. “We’re prepared, we’re ready. All of our plans look good on
The lights dimmed and the crowd hushed as Karoline Kristensen entered for her performance. However, this was no ordinary Dutch theater: The temperature was 80°C and the audience naked apart from a towel. Dressed in a swimsuit and to the tune of emotional music, the 21-year-old Kristensen started her routine, performed inside a large sauna, with a bed of hot rocks in the middle. For a week this month, a group of wellness practitioners, called “sauna masters,” are gathering at a picturesque health resort in the Netherlands to compete in this year’s Aufguss world sauna championships. The practice takes its name from a
When details from a scientific experiment that could have helped clear Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva landed at the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the leader of the organization’s reaction was unequivocal: “We have to stop that urgently,” he wrote. No mention of the test ever became public and Valieva’s defense at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) went on without it. What effect the information could have had on Valieva’s case is unclear, but without it, the skater, then 15 years old, was eventually disqualified from the 2022 Winter Olympics after testing positive for a banned heart medication that would later
RSS