Category: Tennis

NEW YORK: US tennis great Serena Williams announced on Tuesday that “the countdown has begun” to her retirement from the sport.

“There comes a time in life when we have to decide to move in a different direction,” the 40-year-old, 23-time Grand Slam winner said in a post on Instagram.

“That time is always hard when you love something so much. My goodness do I enjoy tennis. But now, the countdown has begun.

“I have to focus on being a mom, my spiritual goals and finally discovering a different, but just exciting Serena. I’m gonna relish these next few weeks.”

Williams won the last of her 23 Slams at the 2017 Australian Open when she was already pregnant with her daughter, Olympia.

However, she has failed to add a 24th major which would take her level with Margaret Court’s all-time record.

Her final attempt will come at the US Open in New York later this month.

Williams stepped onto a hardcourt for the first time in a year and a half on Monday in the WTA Toronto tournament where she fought through to the second round with a straight sets victory over Nuria Parrizas Diaz.

It was her first singles victory since the 2021 French Open, some 14 months ago.

The former world number one had played her first singles match in a year following a lengthy injury layoff during a first-round defeat at Wimbledon in June.

Earlier Tuesday, Williams wrote in the September edition of Vogue where she was featured on the cover that she was “evolving away” from the sport after the US Open where she has won six of her major singles titles.

“Unfortunately I wasn’t ready to win Wimbledon this year,” she wrote in Vogue.

“And I don’t know if I will be ready to win New York. But I’m going to try. And the lead-up tournaments will be fun. I know there’s a fan fantasy that I might have tied Margaret that day in London, then maybe beat her record in New York, and then at the trophy ceremony say, 3See ya!3 I get that. It’s a good fantasy.

“But I’m not looking for some ceremonial, final on-court moment. I’m terrible at goodbyes, the world’s worst.”

READ: Germany to face Colombia as FIFA U20 Women’s WC begins on August 10 

LONDON: Daniil Medvedev, who won his first tournament of the year at the weekend, retained his position at the top of the ATP rankings published on Monday while Nick Kyrgios climbed to his highest rank in two and half years. 

Medvedev, who is over 1,000 points clear of the injured Alexander Zverev, won his first title since claiming the US Open almost a year ago when he roared past defending champion Cameron Norrie in the final of the hardcourt tournament in Los Cabos, Mexico.

Medvedev snapped a five-match losing streak in finals — a stretch that included his agonising five-set loss to Rafael Nadal in the Australian Open final in February.

He also came up short this year in ‘s-Hertogenbosch and Halle. He did not get a chance at Wimbledon, where Russian and Belarussian players were banned because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

In spite of losing his title, Norrie still moved up a place to 11 with the Pole Hubert Hurkacz nudging up to 10.

The man on the slide, down two places, is Jannik Sinner, who chose to skip the event in Washington, losing the points he gained last year when he won it.

Sinner’s absence left the door open for Australian Nick Kyrgios who followed his journey to the Wimbledon final with his first title in three years.

The Australian climbs 26 places to 37th, his best ranking since February 2020.

READ: Arshad Nadeem gets international scholarship until Paris Olympics 2024

LOS CABOS: World number one Daniil Medvedev won his first ATP title of 2022 on Saturday, roaring past defending champion Cameron Norrie 7-5, 6-0 in the final of the hardcourt tournament in Los Cabos, Mexico.

Medvedev snapped a five-match losing streak in finals – a stretch that included his agonizing, five-set loss to Rafael Nadal in the Australian Open final in February.

He also came up short this year in ‘s-Hertogenbosch and Halle. He didn’t get a chance at Wimbledon, where Russian and Belarussian players were banned because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

His first trophy since he won the US Open last year — denying Novak Djokovic a calendar Grand Slam — comes just as Medvedev launches the final build-up to his title defence in the final Grand Slam of 2022.

Next, he’ll defend his Canadian Open title before tackling the Cincinnati Masters.

Defending Los Cabos champion Norrie did what he could in the opening set, but Medvedev gained a decisive break to lead 6-5 and once he’d served out the opening set there was simply no stopping him.

“It was not easy,” Medvedev said in his on-court interview.

“Cam is an amazing player, so it was really intense,”” he added. “When you play against him, you know that you have to fight for every point.”

Medvedev had two set points on his serve at 5-4, but was broken.

In the next game, he scraped his hand on the court reaching for a shot on the opening point and needed treatment because of the blood.

“I didn’t play bad in that game at 5-4,” Medvedev said. “So I knew I just had to stay there. Actually bleeding helped me I think a little bit so I could hold my nerve a little bit more.”

Medvedev was playing his first tournament since a quarter-final exit at Mallorca in June.

With each match, he looked more assured, and he ended the week without dropping a set against a modest array of opponents starting with 224th-ranked Australian Rinky Hijikata followed by 98th-ranked Lithuanian Ricardas Berankis and 38th-ranked Serb Miomir Kecmanovic.

Norrie was a tougher proposition. Ranked 12th, he has taken his tally of ATP titles to four since winning his first at Los Cabos last year.

He had reached his 10th final since the start of 2021 by beating second-seeded Canadian Felix Auger-Aliassime in the semi-finals.

Once Medvedev found his groove, however, Norrie had no answer.

“Every match was very good, but the final is always special,” Medvedev said. “In the final, you play the best player of this week, so it’s always a high-level match and I’m really happy that I managed to show some good level, some good shots in such an important match.”

Medvedev stamped himself the early US Open favourite, especially given the likely absence of Djokovic because of his refusal to be vaccinated against Covid-19 and the uncertainty surrounding injured Nadal.

The Spaniard, ranked third in the world, pulled out of the Montreal Masters this week as he recovers from an abdominal tear suffered at Wimbledon.

READ: Shajar Abbas finishes last in 200m final of CWG athletic

WASHINGTON: Top seed Andrey Rublev won twice on Friday to reach the semi-finals of the ATP and WTA Washington Open, dispatching Americans Maxime Cressy and J.J. Wolf at the US Open tuneup.

World number eight Rublev defeated 32nd-ranked Cressy 6-4, 7-6 (10/8) in one hour and 42 minutes then eliminated 99th-ranked wildcard Wolf 6-2, 6-3 in 78 minutes.

“I didn’t spend much time on court,” Rublev said of his three-hour total. “That was the main key today.”

Rain Thursday night forced double duty upon Rublev and several others but Friday storms provided everyone a timely rest break between matches.

Rublev, whose only other two-win day was at Washington in 2018, rolled through the first set against Wolf in 28 minutes, then broke to lead 2-1 and cruised from there.

Next in Rublev’s path is Japan’s 96th-ranked Yoshihito Nishioka, who outlasted British 16th seed Daniel Evans 7-6 (7/5), 4-6, 7-5 after three hours and 35 minutes.

“Rather than to spend two matches like me than one match like him,” Rublev said.

Wimbledon runner-up Nick Kyrgios fired 35 aces on his way to beating hometown hero Frances Tiafoe 6-7 (5/7), 7-6 (14/12), 6-2 and reaching the other semi-final against Sweden’s 115th-ranked Mikael Ymer.

Nishioka improved to 5-0 all-time against the 40th-ranked Englishman in the rain-interrupted affair to reach his first ATP semi-final since 2020 at Delray Beach. His only ATP title came at Shenzhen in 2018.

“I never gave up and that’s the way I think I won,” Nishioka said. “I just focused on making a lot of balls and to play long rallies. I knew he didn’t want to because he was getting tired.”

Rublev seeks his 12th career crown and fourth title of the season after Marseille, Dubai and Belgrade to match Spaniards Rafael Nadal and Carlos Alcaraz for the most ATP trophies this year.

Australia’s 63rd-ranked Kyrgios, who won the most recent of his six ATP titles at Washington in 2019, needed only 14 minutes to complete an early win over US fourth seed Reilly Opelka 7-6 (7/1), 6-2.

Kyrgios then outlasted 27th-ranked Tiafoe after two and a half hours, yelling, “I want to go to bed,” in the third set of a match that ended at 1 in the morning.

Tiafoe won the last five points of the first-set tiebreaker, the last on his sixth ace, and had four match points in the second-set tiebreaker.

But Kyrgios answered with an ace, backhand winner, forehand volley winner and service return winner and forced a third set when Tiafor sent a forehand long.

Tiafoe, who won a third set earlier to defeat Dutch eighth seed Botic van de Zandschulp, hit a crosscourt forehand wide to hand Kyrgios a break to open the third set and missed a backhand to drop a break in the seventh before Kyrgios held to advance.

The Aussie hit 60 winners and saved five match points in all.

Ymer, who lost his only ATP final last August at Winston-Salem, beat 54th-ranked American Sebastian Korda 6-2, 5-7, 6-3 after two hours and 27 minutes.

READ: India stun England in a thriller to qualify for CWG 2022 Final 

LOS CABOS: World number one Daniil Medvedev, playing his first match in six weeks, beat Australian qualifier Rinky Hijikata 6-4, 6-3 on Wednesday at the ATP hard court tournament in Los Cabos, Mexico.

It was a milestone 250th match win of the reigning US Open champion’s career.

“Someone told me this a few days ago,” Medvedev said after the match. “Otherwise I would not have known. That’s nice, a milestone in a way.

“I want more victories, but that’s nice to have 250. We’ll try to get more.”

Medvedev is playing his first tournament since bowing out of the quarter-finals at Mallorca on June 23. He missed Wimbledon.

Medvedev gained the first break of the match to claim the opening set.

He saved the first break point he faced in the opening game of the second, and gained the break he needed for a 4-2 lead against Hijikata.

The 21-year-old Australian world number 224 put up a fight, fending off a stream of break points before Medvedev closed it out after 90 minutes.

“It’s definitely not that easy to play after you stop for a while, especially (playing my) first match on hard courts since a long, long time — since Miami,” Medvedev said.

“Sensations were not bad. I could have just broken a little bit more, but when you win everything is fine.”

Medvedev next faces Ricardas Berankis of Lithuania, who beat Argentina’s Facundo Bagnis 7-6 (7/4), 6-3.

Second-seeded Canadian Felix Auger-Aliassime also advanced, beating Mexico’s Alex Hernandez 6-3, 7-5.

READ: Bowlers shine as New Zealand edge past Netherlands in first T20I 

LAHORE: Pakistan’s ace tennis player Aisam-ul-Haq lamented no support from the government and federation for the betterment of the game in the country as he launched the Talent Hunt Program to groom the young players with the trials set to kick off tomorrow. 

Speaking at a press conference here on Thursday, the tennis star claimed that the country lacked a proper system that could produce quality tennis players and announced that his initiative would provide mentorship and assistance to the 16 young emerging players of the country to compete at the international level.

“We used to hear the same thing everywhere. Why is it that no player from the country emerges except for me and Aqeel Khan?” he said.

“In Pakistan, we don’t have such a system in place for tennis. When our players compete at the international level, they do not have that level of fitness.” he asserted

The national tennis player stated that they had hired the services of professional trainers and coaches for the best grooming of the young talent through the programme and would also help those players in finding sponsorships for their future endeavours.

The programme, which is set to begin on August 5, will be held in four major cities across Pakistan: Lahore, Islamabad, Peshawar, and Karachi.

Approximately 400 tennis players will participate in trials in 4 cities and 16 selected players will be given complete training through professional physical trainers and tennis coaches for one year under the supervision of national tennis star Aisam.

“Right now we have very limited funds available. We will definitely launch the talent hunt in other parts of the country when we get more funding” he added.

Furthermore, the 42-year-old tennis player urged the Tennis federation and the government to support his initiative as he aimed to produce more tennis stars for the country.

READ: Bowlers-led South Africa crush Sri Lanka by ten wickets in CWG 2022

SAN JOSE: Reigning Wimbledon champion Elena Rybakina of Kazakhstan lost to seventh seed Daria Kasatkina on Monday in a first-round match at the WTA San Jose hardcourt tournament.

World number 12 Kasatkina won 11 of the last 12 games to win 1-6, 6-2, 6-0 in Rybakina’s debut match since winning her first major title.

Kasatkina will next play American Taylor Townsend, who eliminated Australian Storm Sanders 6-1, 6-4 at the US Open hardcourt tuneup event.

After 23rd-ranked Rybakina rolled through the opening set in 35 minutes, Kasatkina dominated the final two.

American Madison Keys, the 2017 US Open runner-up, defeated China’s Zhang Shuai 6-4, 6-2 to book a second-round date against Tunisian Ons Jabeur, who lost to Rybakina in last month’s Wimbledon final.

Japan’s Naomi Osaka, a four-time Grand Slam champion, and American sixth seed Coco Gauff would meet in a second-round matchup if both win their openers on Tuesday.

Former world number one Osaka will face China’s Zheng Qinwen while 18-year-old Gauff, this year’s French Open runner-up, meets Anhelina Kalinina of Ukraine.

Osaka, whose ranking has slid to 41st, has not played since losing her first-round match at the French Open. She had suffered a right ankle injury in a tuneup event at Madrid.

READ: PCB to deny players NOC for BBL participation: Reports 

WARSAW: World number one Iga Swiatek suffered a quarter-final exit at her home tournament, the Poland Open, after losing in three sets Friday to France’s Caroline Garcia.

French Open champion Swiatek had not lost on clay in over a year before going down 6-1, 1-6, 6-4 to the 45th-ranked Garcia.

Swiatek was 18-0 on clay this season, winning titles at Stuttgart, Rome and Roland Garros, and had only dropped two sets on the surface in 2022.

“It was a very important match and I tried to be ready for it,” said Garcia.

“I started very strong, putting a lot of pressure on her. As soon as I got a bit lower-intensity, she came back very strong, and that’s what is happening against a top player.

“I stayed positive, I kept believing in my game and the way I wanted to play, and the third set was definitely very good tennis.”

Garcia will play Italy’s Jasmine Paolini for a place in the Warsaw final. Paolini recovered from a poor start to defeat Switzerland’s Viktorija Golubic 1-6, 6-2, 6-2.

Ukraine’s Kateryna Baindl faces Ana Bogdan of Romania in the other semi-final.

READ: ‘We played well as we did not lose points’ Hockey team’s captain Umar 

WARSAW: Iga Swiatek’s victorious homecoming continued with a 6-3, 6-2 defeat of lucky loser Gabriela Lee to reach the Poland Open quarter-finals on Thursday.

The world number one defeated her 146th-ranked Romanian opponent to extend her clay run to 18 wins, putting her overall record for 2022 at 48-4.

French Open champion Swiatek has not lost a match on clay since the 2021 Roland Garros quarter-finals.

Swiatek broke in the seventh game for 4-3, taking advantage of a double fault from Lee with the Romanian failing to make the most of her break point chance when trailing 4-1 in the second set.

Swiatek hit 25 winners to three for her rival and will next face fifth seed, Caroline Garcia, for a place in the semi-finals.

The Frenchwoman defeated Elisabetta Cocciaretto 6-3, 7-5 have also eliminated the Italian in Palermo last week.

Ukraine’s Kateryna Baindl advanced after Italy’s Sara Errani retired trailing 6-2, 3-0 with a back problem and will meet Brazil’s Laura Pigossi.

READ: Gardner neutralizes Renuka’s brilliance to stun India in CWG opener 

CANBERRA: Wimbledon finalist Nick Kyrgios has pulled out of the singles draw at the ATP event in Atlanta due to a knee injury.

The Australian was scheduled to face German Peter Gojowczyk on Tuesday but withdrew from the tournament following an earlier doubles win alongside compatriot Thanasi Kokkinakis.

“I’m shattered that I’m not able to compete tonight,” Kyrgios told the crowd.

The hard-court event was due to be Kyrgios’ first tournament since his run to the Wimbledon final earlier this month when he lost to Novak Djokovic in four sets.

“I’ve won this tournament once and I’m probably playing some of the best tennis in my career and all I wanted to do was come out here and give you guys a show,” Kyrgios added.

“I’m going to keep my hopes up and maybe be able to continue doubles with Thanasi this week.”

Kyrgios, ranked 47th in the world after Wimbledon was stripped of its ranking points for banning Russian and Belarusian players, could return to Cincinnati after receiving a wildcard for the Masters tournament which starts on August 13.

READ: ‘Ahmed was targeted because of me’ claims Shahid Afridi