Guillermo Garcia-Lopez of Spain defeated Andreas Seppi of Italy 7-6 (4), 6-3 on Sunday in the final of the Zagreb Indoors for his fourth career ATP title.
The third-seeded Garcia-Lopez rallied from 4-1 down in the first-set tiebreaker, winning six straight points to clinch the set.
Seppi earned the first break of the match for a 3-2 lead in the second, but Garcia-Lopez responded again by winning the next four games. He clinched the win when Seppi sent a backhand into the net.
“This was very emotional. He played good tennis to get to 4-1 in the tiebreaker, and I think it was very important to win the long rally at 4-3,” Garcia-Lopez said. “When I broke back in the second set I think he was very disappointed.”
Garcia-Lopez had failed to defeat Seppi in their four previous meetings.
“I have never played good against him, I was not in good shape,” he said. “His style is not good for my game, he is solid from both sides. Today I tried to change the rhythm.”
The fifth-seeded Italian made 40 unforced errors.
“It was a difficult match. I think he played very good tactically,” Seppi said. “Sure, it did not feel nice to lose the set after being 4-1 up. At 4-3 we played a long rally ... I was still pretty calm after I lost the set, I was even a break up in the second, but I lost concentration in the middle of the second set.”
Inter’s defense of their Italian Serie A title was hit with a setback on Sunday as they lost 1-0 at home to AS Roma, while Scott McTominay netted a brace as SSC Napoli beat Torino 2-0 to go top of the table. No fixtures were played on Friday or Saturday because of the funeral of Pope Francis in Rome, meaning the full round of Serie A matches took place on Sunday and yesterday. Matias Soule’s first-half strike for Roma knocked Inter off top spot earlier in the day before new Napoli opened up a three-point buffer with victory in Sunday’s
FOCUS: ‘We came out here with a goal in mind ... to keep our foot on their throat and on their neck, and continue to play 48 minutes of basketball,’ Donovan Mitchell said The Cleveland Cavaliers on Monday thrashed the Miami Heat to cruise into the next round of the NBA playoffs as the Golden State Warriors battled past the Houston Rockets 109-106 to move to the brink of a series victory. After pounding Miami 124-87 in game three on Saturday, No.1 Eastern Conference seeds Cleveland once again piled on the misery for their outclassed opponents with a crushing 138-83 victory to complete a 4-0 series win. The 55-point drubbing was the largest series-clinching victory in NBA playoff history and sets up a series against either the Indiana Pacers or Milwaukee Bucks in
Freddie Freeman homered and drove in four runs, Shohei Ohtani also went deep and Roki Sasaki earned his first major league win as the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Atlanta Braves 10-3 on Saturday night for their seventh straight victory. The Dodgers have won the first two games of the series to improve to 5-0 against Atlanta this year. Los Angeles’ three-game sweep at home early in the season left the Braves 0-7. Sasaki allowed three runs and six hits over five innings. The 23-year-old right-hander gave up a home run to Ozzie Albies, but received plenty of offensive support in his
Shuttler Lin Chun-yi yesterday kept Taiwan on the board as they faced their first major challenge of the group stage after marching into the last eight at the Sudirman Cup Finals in Xiamen, China. Taiwan were losing 3-1 to South Korea as of press time last night, with only the men’s doubles match remaining. Taiwan and four-time champions South Korea have already progressed to the quarter-finals, after Taiwan on Monday blanked the Czech Republic 5-0 without giving up a single game. Before last night’s tie, Taiwan were undefeated in Group B, with a 9-1 match record, ahead of South Korea, who, although also
RSS