Third-seeded Rafael Nadal battled back from a break down in the final set to defeat Grigor Dimitrov 6-4, 4-6, 6-3 on Wednesday to reach the Swiss Indoors quarter-finals.
Second seed Stanislas Wawrinka suffered his eighth first-round loss at the tournament as the French Open champion slumped to a 3-6, 7-6 (7/2), 6-4 defeat to Ivo Karlovic.
Nadal won the opening set against Dimitrov, but dropped the second after leading 4-2. When he dropped serve in the opening game of the third set on a double-fault, the situation looked grim for the Spaniard.
Photo: EPA
However, the 14-time major winner broke back for 5-3 with a winning overhead, serving out the tight victory a game later after more than two hours on court.
“This was another very tough match, I had to fight, but to win this way was fantastic,” Nadal said.
“I’m very happy to be in the quarter-finals. Winning like this gives me confidence after my second important win this week,” he added.
Nadal faces either Marin Cilic or Teimuraz Gabashvili for a semi-final spot.
Karlovic, the 36-year-old Croatian, sent down 21 aces to take victory over Wawrinka after trailing a set and a break.
“I had a poor first set and was missing a lot with my volleys, but I began improving in the second set and got a bit lucky when I converted my break points [in the sixth game at 3-3],” Karlovic said.
“After that, things started going my way,” he said.
Karlovic, who had lost five of six previous meetings with Wawrinka, is to play Serbia’s Dusan Lajovic.
Wawrinka was disappointed to have let it slip away.
“It’s never easy to lose a match like that, especially since I felt I was playing well and feeling good. I had my chances to take control of the match,” the Swiss said.
“After the first set, everything was good, I was playing well. I played really good for two sets, more or less. I had a few mistakes, but it can happen,” he said.
“He’s playing his best year so far, he’s improved his game a lot,” Wawrinka said.
“He serves amazing and you don’t get many chances. Today I got my chances and didn’t take them,” Wawrinka added.
Elsewhere in the opening round, fourth seed Kevin Anderson advanced over Croatian teenager Borna Coric 6-3, 6-2, while seventh seed and last weekend’s Moscow champion Cilic beat Basel native Marco Chiudinelli 6-3, 7-6 (7/3).
South Africa’s Anderson sent down 29 winners, improving his record in the best season of his career to 45-22.
Jack Sock won an American battle with Denis Kudla 6-4, 6-2 and faces countryman John Isner, the sixth seed.
Russia’s Gabashvili stopped Argentina Leonardo Mayer 7-5, 4-6, 6-4.
In the second round, David Goffin made the quarter-finals with a 6-4, 6-3 win over Adrian Mannarino.
The Minnesota Timberwolves, with so many promising performances spoiled by late mistakes fresh in their memory bank, sure timed this strong finish well. Jaden McDaniels scored a career playoff-high 30 points and spearheaded Minnesota’s stifling defense on an ailing Luka Doncic, and the Timberwolves beat the Los Angeles Lakers 116-104 to take a 2-1 lead in the best-of-seven Western Conference first-round series in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on Friday night. “Jaden never looks tired. He looks like he could play 48 minutes,” said teammate Anthony Edwards, who had 29 points, eight rebounds and eight assists. Julius Randle added 22 points for the Wolves, who outscored
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
Ethiopia’s Tigst Assefa yesterday set a women’s only world record of 2 hours, 15 minutes, 50 seconds as she won the London Marathon, while Kenya’s Sabastian Sawe put a star-studded men’s field to the sword. For 28-year-old Assefa it was ample compensation for finishing runner-up in London and the Paris Olympics last year — especially as bitter Dutch rival, the Ethiopia-born Sifan Hassan, finished third. Assefa dropped Kenya’s Joyciline Jepkosgei as the race, played out in blazing sunshine and with thousands lining the route, entered its business end. She came home almost three minutes clear of the Kenyan. Hassan, who beat her in
RSS