Professional Tennis
Victoria Azarenka rolled past third-seeded Czech Petra Kvitova 6-2, 6-3 on Wednesday, notching her first win over a top four player since 2013. Azarenka came out firing against Kvitova, building a hefty 6-2, 4-1 lead. After Kvitova trimmed that lead to 3-4, Azarenka rattled off the next two games to close out the fourth-ranked player…
Rafael Nadal got his Rogers Cup tournament off to a winning start on Wednesday, downing Ukrainian Sergiy Stakhovsky 7-6(4), 6-3 to reach the third-round in Montreal. The seventh-seed Nadal had a chance to serve out the first set, but was broken by Stakhovsky to send the opening set into a tiebreak. Nadal outdueled him in…
Novak Djokovic recorded his 250th career win at ATP World Tour Masters 1000 tournaments on Tuesday, beating Brazilian Thomaz Bellucci 6-3, 7-6(4) in the Rogers Cup second-round. Bellucci played Djokovic tough, but was just never able to break the Serb. Djokovic broke once in the first set to take it 6-3, and then after both…
World number one Serena Williams came out of the gate slow on Tuesday afternoon at the Rogers Cup in Toronto, but in typical Serena fashion, rallied back for a 2-6, 6-3, 6-0 victory over Italy’s Flavia Pennetta to move into the tournament’s third-round. After dropping the first set, Serena found herself down a break early…
German Sabine Lisicki had to wait out a long rain delay to defeat American Venus Williams on Monday night, but did so in routine fashion, beating the American 6-0, 6-3 in a first-round matchup at the Rogers Cup in Toronto. The two didn’t take to the court until after 10:00 p.m. on Monday night, as…
Germany’s Angelique Kerber won her fourth title of the season on Sunday, beating Karolina Pliskova 6-3, 5-7, 6-4 to win the Bank of the West Classic trophy in Stanford. In this tightly-contested match that lasted over two hours, Kerber was just a bit more efficient than Pliskova. While Pliskova nearly doubled her up in the…
Two Americans found themselves in the Citi Open finals from Washington, D.C. on Sunday afternoon. On the women’s singles side, Sloane Stephens was seeking her first career WTA title, while John Isner looked to take down last year’s U.S. Open runner-up Kei Nishikori in the Men’s Singles Final. Stephens was playing in her first career…
American Varvara Lepchenko played lights out tennis on Thursday, defeating top-seed Caroline Wozniacki 6-4, 6-2 to reach the Bank of the West Classic quarterfinals in Stanford, Calif. Lepchenko fired 26 winners, committed just 17 unforced errors and broke four times to beat Wozniacki rather routinely. “I think I just followed my plan. I was doing…
For the first time since 2012, three Americans find themselves in the quarterfinals of the Citi Open in Washington, D.C, as eighth-seed John Isner, 15th-seeded Jack Sock and unseeded Steve Johnson all won their third round matches on Thursday. The most surprising victory of the three came from the unseeded Johnson, who upended sixth-seeded Bulgarian…
American Alison Riske notched the second Top 10 win of her career on Wednesday, downing 10th-ranked Carlos Suarez-Navarro 6-4, 6-4 to reach the Bank of the West Classic quarterfinals. Suarez-Navarro actually jumped out to a 3-1 lead in the opening set, but Riske snatched the break right back, and another break later in the frame…