French fifth seed Adrian Mannarino put in a long day on Wednesday to reach the quarter-finals of the ATP’s Hall of Fame Tennis Championships on the grass courts of Newport.
In a match disrupted by rain on Tuesday, Mannarino returned to dispatch German veteran Tommy Haas 6-7 (5/7), 7-6 (7/1), 6-4, then turned around to beat compatriot Edouard Roger-Vasselin 1-6, 6-3, 6-2.
Mannarino earned a quarter-final clash with American Rajeev Ram, who followed up his first-round upset of top-seeded John Isner with a 6-4, 6-3 second-round victory over Japan’s Yuichi Sugita.
Ram, the world No. 161 who won his lone ATP title at Newport in 2009, fired seven aces and won 85 percent of his second serve points in the 67-minute encounter. He did not face a break point and converted all three of his break chances against the 144th-ranked Sugita.
“I guess I was executing pretty well,” Ram said. “It’s a good thing if you can frustrate your opponent.”
Second-seeded Ivo Karlovic of Croatia advanced, blasting 29 aces past Tunisia’s Malek Jaziri in a 6-4, 7-6 (7/4) win.
Karlovic will have to wait to learn his last-eight foe, after rain halted play between Sam Querrey and Dustin Brown as the Americans battled in the third set.
Australian John-Patrick Smith needed just 54 minutes to get past local favorite Jared Donaldson 6-3, 6-1. Smith, who beat wild card compatriot Bernard Tomic in the first round.
He next faces Japan’s Tatsuma Ito, who upset seventh-seeded American Steve Johnson 6-4, 6-4.
Fourth-seeded American Jack Sock rallied to beat Slovakian Lukas Lacko 3-6, 7-6 (7/4), 6-4 and set up a quarter-final clash with Czech Jan Hernych, who saved a match point en route to a 7-6 (7/5), 6-7 (6/8), 7-6 (9/7) victory over Colombian Alejandro Falla.
RECORD DEFEAT: The Shanghai-based ‘Oriental Sports Daily’ said the drubbing was so disastrous, and taste so bitter, that all that is left is ‘numbness’ Chinese soccer fans and media rounded on the national team yesterday after they experienced fresh humiliation in a 7-0 thrashing to rivals Japan in their opening Group C match in the third phase of Asian qualifying for the 2026 World Cup. The humiliation in Saitama on Thursday against Asia’s top-ranked team was China’s worst defeat in World Cup qualifying and only a goal short of their record 8-0 loss to Brazil in 2012. Chinese President Xi Jinping once said he wanted China to host and even win the World Cup one day, but that ambition looked further away than ever after a
‘KHELIFMANIA’: In the weeks since the Algerian boxer won gold in Paris, national enthusiasm is inspiring newfound interest in the sport, particularly among women In the weeks since Algeria’s Imane Khelif won an Olympic gold medal in women’s boxing, athletes and coaches in the North African nation say national enthusiasm is inspiring newfound interest in the sport, particularly among women. Khelif’s image is practically everywhere, featured in advertisements at airports, on highway billboards and in boxing gyms. The 25-year-old welterweight’s success in Paris has vaulted her to national hero status, especially after Algerians rallied behind her in the face of uninformed speculation about her gender and eligibility to compete. Amateur boxer Zougar Amina, a medical student who has been practicing for a year, called Khelif an
Crowds descended on the home of 17-year-old Chinese diver Quan Hongchan after she won two golds at the Paris Olympics while gymnast Zhang Boheng hid in a Beijing airport toilet to escape overzealous throngs of fans. They are just two recent examples of what state media are calling “toxic fandom” and Chinese authorities have vowed to crack down on it. Some of the adulation toward China’s sports stars has been more sinister — fans obsessing over athletes’ personal lives, cyberbullying opponents or slamming supposedly crooked judges. Experts say it mirrors the kind of behavior once reserved for entertainment celebrities before
GOING GLOBAL: The regular season fixture is part of the football league’s increasingly ambitious plans to spread the sport to international destinations The US National Football League (NFL) breaks new ground in its global expansion strategy tomorrow when the Philadelphia Eagles and Green Bay Packers face off in the first-ever grid-iron game staged in Brazil. For one night only, the land of Pele and ‘The Beautiful Game’ will get a rare glimpse into the bone-crunching world of American football as the Packers and Eagles collide at Sao Paulo’s Neo Quimica Arena, the 46,000-seat home of soccer club Corinthians. The regular season fixture is part of the NFL’s increasingly ambitious plans to spread the US’ most popular sport to new territories following previous international fixtures
RSS