Nadal & Verdasco Hustle For Hot Shot Indian Wells 2016
Nadal & Verdasco Hustle For Hot Shot Indian Wells 2016
Mar122016
Real Madrid backed “exemplary” club member Rafael Nadal after the tennis star was accused by a former French minister of failing a drugs test.
Ex-French Minister for Health and Sport Roselyne Bachelot said Nadal’s seven-month absence in 2012 was “probably due to a positive doping test”.
Nadal, 29, has denied ever doping and the Spanish Olympic Committee said he had passed “countless doping tests”.
Real Madrid have defended Nadal from “the attacks made on his person”.
A club statement said: “Rafa Nadal represents the fundamental values of sport.
“His greatness and his incredible achievements have always been based upon a foundation of exemplary conduct, unwavering work, talent and astonishing levels of commitment.
“This being the case, our institution considers the attacks made on his person by former minister Roselyne Bachelot to be unjustifiable and unacceptable.”
Nadal, who has won 14 Grand Slam titles, was out for seven months from July 2012 with tendinitis and then a stomach virus.
The Spaniard was asked on Wednesday about the subject of doping, in the light of Maria Sharapova’s admission last week of a failed test.
“I am a completely clean guy,” said the former world number one. “I have never had the temptation of doing something wrong.”
Sascha Zverev dug deep to eliminate veteran Ivan Dodig 3-6, 7-5, 6-3 at the BNP Paribas Open on Friday. The 18 year old German needed two hours and 18 minutes to see off the 31 year old Croat in their first FedEx ATP Head2Head meeting, benefitting from an unusual, momentum-turning incident.
“I thought he twisted his ankle at the first, but then I saw him bleeding pretty close to the eye and I was like, wow, he probably hit himself with the racquet,” said Zverev, who was across the net when his opponent took a tumble, then hit himself in the face with his frame at 3-6, 1-1. “I don’t know what happened, to be quite honest. I didn’t see it, but he started bleeding quite heavily then.”
Dodig’s medical timeout allowed the young German to regroup. Zverev converted on two of nine break points in the second set to even the match, then won 11 of 12 first-serve points in the deciding set to secure victory. Next up for Zverev will be No. 23 seed Grigor Dimitrov, who holds a 1-0 lead in the pair’s FedEx ATP Head2Head rivalry (2014 Basel).
Vasek Pospisil was made to work hard before eliminating American wild card Jared Donaldson 7-6(5), 6-7(2), 6-3. The Canadian struck nine aces and needed almost three hours to close out the win. He will face Gilles Simon in the second round.
“I’m happy with the way I played and the way I fought,” said Pospisil, who represented Canada last week in a Davis Cup tie against France on a clay court in Guadeloupe. “The conditions were tough here. They’re polar opposite from what I played last week, so it’s a little bit of an adjustment, but he played a good match and he surprised me a little bit. He was playing well, and I had to play some great tennis to win today.”
Mikhail Kukushkin will play No. 5 seed Kei Nishikori in the second round after downing Daniel Munoz de la Nava 7-6(1), 6-2. The Kazakh will be looking for his first victory against the Japanese in six meetings.
Rafael Nadal will open against fellow left-hander Gilles Muller in the second round. The big-serving Muller defeated Victor Estrella-Burgos 7-5, 6-3, firing 16 aces in the process. Muller has shown flashes of brilliance in four previous tour-level meetings with Nadal, pushing three of their past six sets to a tie-break and beating a 19-year-old Nadal at Wimbledon in 2005.
Qualifier Bjorn Fratangelo earned his first ATP World Tour victory with a 6-4, 6-4 win over Teymuraz Gabashvili. The American did not face a break point in the 82-minute win. His next opponent will be top seed and two-time defending champion Novak Djokovic.
“I feel amazing. It’s a great feeling to get my first ATP win, and to do it in a 1000 event, to play Djokovic [next], it’s a pretty surreal feeling. I’m going to enjoy this as much as I can right now,” Fratangelo said.
Singles stars combine to down Murray
John Isner and Milos Raonic, two of the most fearsome servers on the ATP World Tour, teamed up for the first time to take out Colin Fleming and Andy Murray 7-5, 6-7(5), 10-8 at the BNP Paribas Open on Friday. Isner/Raonic fired six aces in the one-hour, 43-minute win and saved all eight break points faced.
It was Raonic’s first doubles match of the season, while Isner won a match in Auckland (partnering Rosol) before withdrawing from the event.
Murray/Fleming did not miss a first serve in the Match Tie-break, but their towering opponents won three return points (3/9) to move on.
Philipp Kohlschreiber and Dominic Thiem defeated Frenchmen Richard Gasquet and Benoit Paire 6-3, 4-6, 10-4. The German/Austrian pairing were nearly unbeatable on their first delivery, winning 90 per cent of first serve points. Gasquet/Paire saved 12 of 13 break points, but succumbed in 70 minutes.
Roberto Bautista Agut and Victor Troicki downed Pablo Cuevas and Marcel Granollers 2-6, 6-3, 10-4 in 68 minutes. The Spanish/Serbian duo won 57 points to their opponents’ 55 and notched their first team win in three attempts.
Watch live doubles matches from Indian Wells.
To watch the BNP Paribas Open online, visit TennisTV.com.
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Top seed outlines keys to Indian Wells success
The Californian desert has been a happy hunting ground for Novak Djokovic. The World No. 1 is a four-time champion in Indian Wells and is looking to make it three titles in a row at the year’s first ATP World Tour Masters 1000 event.
But how does he do it? For the Serb, it starts with preparation.
“All the tennis players are required to acclimatise as soon as possible because that’s part of what we do, and you can’t afford to waste too much of your time,” Djokovic said. “I heard about the theory of necessity for the body to get acclimated to a certain time zone, that you need as many days as the time difference in hours. So basically, if you’re going to Australia, a ten-hour difference in relation to Europe, then you need 10 days to really get your body used to it.
“But from my personal experience, you can do it much quicker. I believe in nutrition and hydration and the mental side of it. If you prepare yourself for going to that place, you set your clock, and you really devote yourself to that part of the world, then it seems easier.”
Djokovic has been in Indian Wells for nearly a week after helping Serbia advance to the Davis Cup quarter-finals, and he feels ready to defend his title.
“The conditions are pretty suitable to my style of play,” he noted. “I like to have a little bit more time to construct the point. I feel comfortable with the speed of the court and the surface. Especially in the afternoon and night matches, when it’s a bit slower.
“The ball bounces high. I grew up on clay. I grew up with a high bounce. I feel comfortable playing on these courts.”
The top player in the Emirates ATP Rankings has 61 tour-level titles and admits that playing in front of a large crowd on a big stage provides him with an additional jolt of energy.
“[The BNP Paribas Open is] setting a really high standard in attracting more fans and increasing the attendance each year,” Djokovic said. “The fans are truly great. You can see how much they love tennis. Every practice session is full. Every match that you play, they are there from the very beginning.
“[I look] forward to performing in such circumstances in front of people who really appreciate me being there.”
Maria Sharapova says she is “determined to fight back” after testing positive for meldonium.
In a Facebook post railing against “distorted and exaggerated” reporting, she denied taking meldonium every day and missing five warnings that the drug was about to be banned.
She also criticised the tennis authorities for making the relevant information “too hard to find”.
Russian Sharapova, 28, will be provisionally suspended from 12 March.
The five-time Grand Slam-winner, who faces a ban of up to four years, says she has been taking the drug, which was added to the World Anti-Doping Agency’s banned list on 1 January, for health reasons for the past 10 years.
However, she insisted she had only taken the heart drug “in the low doses recommended”.
Taking issue with reports that a normal course of meldonium treatment lasts only four to six weeks, she added: “The story quotes the manufacturer of my medicine as saying: ‘Treatment course can be repeated twice or thrice a year. Only physicians can follow and evaluate patient’s health condition and state whether the patient should use meldonium for a longer period of time.’
“That’s exactly what I did. I didn’t take the medicine every day.”
While Sharapova reiterated that she had “no excuses” for failing to be aware of the change in regulations, she criticised the way in which the information was communicated to players.
“The communications? They were buried in newsletters, websites, or handouts,” she wrote.
“In order to be aware of this ‘warning’, you had to open an email with a subject line having nothing to do with anti-doping, click on a webpage, enter a password, enter a username, hunt, click, hunt, click, hunt, click, scroll and read.
“I guess some in the media can call that a warning. I think most people would call it too hard to find.”
28-year-old Sharapova concluded: “I have been honest and upfront. I look forward to the ITF hearing at which time they will receive my detailed medical records.”
British number two Aljaz Bedene was beaten by Mikhail Youzhny in the opening round of the BNP Paribas Open.
Bedene, 26, lost the opening set with a double fault after leading 4-2, and then let slip a 2-0 lead in the decider as he lost 7-5 2-6 6-3 in Indian Wells.
Youzhny, a former top-10 player who is ranked 76 in the world, took advantage of a poor Bedene service game to break for 5-3 before serving out the win.
Andy Murray will play Marcel Granollers of Spain in round two on Saturday.
Maria Sharapova has been “very courageous” to admit her failed drugs test, but must “suffer consequences,” says world number one Novak Djokovic.
The five-time Grand Slam winner, 28, revealed on Monday she tested positive for meldonium in January.
“I do feel sorry [for] her, but it’s normal to accept that under these circumstances the player has to suffer certain consequences,” Djokovic said.
Russian Sharapova will be provisionally suspended from 12 March.
Earlier this week, world number two Andy Murray said Sharapova “must accept responsibility” for failing the test, while women’s world number one Serena Williams said her rival had shown “a lot of courage”.
Former world number one Sharapova says she has been taking the drug, which was added to the World Anti-Doping Agency’s banned list on 1 January, for health reasons for the past 10 years.
“As a friend, I really hope that she will find the best possible way,” world number one Djokovic added.
“I thought she was very courageous and it was very human and brave of her to go out and take the responsibility and say what has happened. She did admit that she made a mistake with her team.”
Eleven-time Grand Slam-winner Djokovic also said too many tennis players rely on medication to feel healthy.
“I feel like in the sport in general that there is maybe a conviction with many athletes that maybe medication and certain substances can make you feel healthy or make you feel better,” he said.
“I don’t believe in that kind of short term process. I believe in long term balance and harmonious health and well-being that is achieved from different aspects.
“I wouldn’t say there is a magic potion or elixir that can make you feel better.”
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