Google Play App Download

Tennis News

From around the world

Felix & Shapovalov Send Canada To First ATP Cup Final

  • Posted: Jan 08, 2022

Felix Auger-Aliassime and Denis Shapovalov sent Canada to its first ATP Cup final on Saturday when they defeated Daniil Medvedev and Roman Safiullin 4-6, 7-5, 10-7 to complete their country’s 2-1 win against Russia. Two-time finalist Spain awaits in Sunday’s championship tie.

The Canadians lost their first four matches of the competition, putting their hopes of qualifying for the knockout rounds in deep trouble. If the United States had beaten Great Britain in the Match Tie-break of their deciding doubles on Thursday, Canada would have been eliminated before playing their third match.

But Auger-Aliassime and Shapovalov have taken full advantage of their opportunities in Sydney. Their excitement for the moment showed after Shapovalov poached to hit a winning short backhand volley on match point. The longtime friends leapt into each other’s arms to celebrate.

“Felix did an amazing job. I had a little bit of a slow start, had trouble returning, but we did a good job to fight,” Shapovalov said. “Felix played unbelievable in the game to break and then in the [Match] Tie-break as well, just making them play so much. It was awesome. We kept fighting. We have great team chemistry, team spirit, so it helped us a lot.”

Despite some scratchy baseline mistakes in his singles match, which carried into the doubles, Auger-Aliassime carved a stunning backhand drop volley at 6/5 in the Match Tie-Break. The World No. 11 double-faulted on his first match point at 9/6 and missed his first serve at 9/7, but they battled through after one hour and 38 minutes.

Shapovalov got the tie off to a good start for Canada when he clawed past Safiullin in a two-hour, 39-minute thriller at No. 2 singles. Medvedev then levelled the tie with a comprehensive victory against Auger-Aliassime at No. 1 singles.

“I had to try and stay positive. Of course it was tough, especially [because] that second set went the way it went in singles,” Auger-Aliassime said. “Denis helped me and the team to push myself. We had a tough start in the doubles, so to be able to come back in this way, it’s really a team effort.

“That’s what the ATP Cup is about. You can still win after being 1-all and losing a tough singles. It’s really about the team effort and we’re happy to be through. We’re really thrilled for the whole team.”

Auger-Aliassime and Shapovalov are 1-1 on the week as a team, including a deciding doubles victory against doubles standouts Jamie Murray and Joe Salisbury in group play.

Medvedev and Safiullin had been 3-0 in doubles this week. Russia went 3-0 as a team in Group B action, but fell just a few points short of returning to the final

Source link

Nadal Battles Into Melbourne Final, Plays Cressy

  • Posted: Jan 08, 2022

Rafael Nadal is one win away from capturing the 89th tour-level trophy of his illustrious career, after he booked a place in the final at the Melbourne Summer Set.

The Spanish superstar, in only his second match since August 2021, drew on his big-match experience on Saturday to battle past Emil Ruusuvuori of Finland 6-4, 7-5 in one hour and 56 minutes.

“It’s an important comeback after five months outside of competition and it means a lot to me to be back in Australia,” said Nadal, who last played at the Citi Open in August 2021. “I need to do some things better on court, but it’s step by step. My body is holding up, and that’s the main thing, and I need matches to get back to 100 per cent. I know my tennis isn’t perfect, but it’s about being patient and doing my best.”

Nadal will now prepare to challenge American qualifier Maxime Cressy, who will be appearing in his first ATP Tour final.

Pressure mounted on Ruusuvuori in the first set, which ended with a double fault and a forehand error. Nadal broke clear for a 5-3 lead in the 69-minute second set when Ruusuvuori made another groundstroke error, but the 22-year-old bounced back immediately. Nadal regained his composure and the match ended with the Finn making a forehand error.

Cressy

Cressy continued his dream run earlier on Saturday. The 24-year-old knocked out former World No. 3 Grigor Dimitrov of Bulgaria 7-5, 7-6(9) in two hours and four minutes.

Cressy, who is already assured of his place in the Top 100 of the ATP Rankings for the first time on Monday, recovered from 3/6 in the second-set tie-break and closed out on his fourth match point. He struck 17 aces and saved all five break points he faced.

This week, Cressy has also beaten Australian qualifier Rinky Hijikata, second-seeded compatriot Reilly Opelka (including two match points saved) and Jaume Munar.

Melbourne Doubles Final Set
Top seeds Wesley Koolhof and Neal Skupski will take on sixth seeds Aleksandr Nedovyesov and Aisam-Ul-Haq Qureshi in the Melbourne doubles final on Sunday. Koolhof and Skupski knocked out third seeds Marcelo Arevalo and Jean-Julien Rojer 6-2, 6-4 in 68 minutes, while Nedovyesov and Qureshi overcame Ricardas Berankis and Denys Molchanov 6-2, 6-2 in 57 minutes.

Source link

Daniil Domination: Medvedev Beats Felix To Force Deciding Doubles

  • Posted: Jan 08, 2022

Daniil Medvedev wasted little time levelling Russia’s ATP Cup semi-final against Canada on Saturday at Ken Rosewall Arena. The World No. 2 produced a flawless performance to defeat Felix Auger-Aliassime 6-4, 6-0 and force a deciding doubles.

Call it a ‘Daniil Domination’.

Auger-Aliassime walked on court with plenty of confidence after defeating two-time Nitto ATP Finals champion Alexander Zverev on Thursday evening in a three-set thriller. But Medvedev frustrated the Canadian with his all-court game and cruised on serve to triumph after 69 minutes.

“It was really tough for me until 4-3 in the first. I actually thought, ‘How can I actually break his serve?’ He was serving just aces, playing good, so I knew I just had to stay in the match, try to do what I can, what’s possible against his big game,” Medvedev said. “He definitely started to play a little bit worse and I managed to use it, and that was the key today.”

Daniil Medvedev
Photo Credit: Peter Staples/ATP Tour
The Canadian started well and used his big serve to control points. But once he slapped a forehand into the net at 4-4 to give away the match’s first break, his game began to unravel.

Medvedev played from well behind the baseline and forced Felix to go for more on his shots to finish points. The 21-year-old struggled with his shot selection, which led to more unforced errors. And with the Russian winning 88 per cent of his first-serve points and going through the match without facing a break point, that left little room for Auger-Aliassime to claw back.

Medvedev now leads Auger-Aliassime 3-0 in their ATP Head2Head series. They last met in the semi-finals of the 2021 US Open at Flushing Meadows.

Denis Shapovalov kicked off the tie with a thrilling three-set victory over Russian “secret weapon” Roman Safiullin. Pending potential lineup changes, Medvedev and Safiullin are scheduled to face Auger-Aliassime and Shapovalov in the deciding doubles. Both of those teams have won at least one deciding doubles this week.

“I feel like in one match anybody can win,” Medvedev said. “In one doubles match anything can happen, so we need to stay focussed, we need to be good and hopefully we can do it.”

Source link

Kyrgios: ‘I Talk A Lot, But I Have Also Beaten A Lot Of Players’

  • Posted: Jan 08, 2022

Coming into 2022 at his lowest ATP Ranking since he was an 18-year-old in 2014, Nick Kyrgios doesn’t expect any favourable draws early in the season. Not that he cares.

The World No. 93, who will turn 27 in April, will be unseeded in his return to the ATP Tour at next week’s Sydney Tennis Classic and at the Australian Open. But the Canberra native is just as likely to beat a Top 5 player as lose to someone outside the Top 50, so a draw is really just a piece of paper to him.

“If I’m ranked 1000 or 10 in the world everyone knows what I’m capable of on tour,” Kyrgios said Saturday. “I’m not a player that hasn’t proven himself… I talk a lot, but I also have beaten a lot of players and I have won a lot of tournaments.

“I won Acapulco unseeded and I beat four Top 10 players. So tough draws [don’t bother me]… That’s not something I’m focusing on, honestly. I just want to go out there and have fun. People are expecting me to put on a good show and I think I’m capable of doing that still.”

Kyrgios, who reached a career-high No. 13 in 2016 and was most recently in the Top 20 in February 2020, remains one of the game’s biggest stars despite his tumble in the rankings. And he regularly produces his best tennis at the Australian Open. Last year he led then-World No. 3 Dominic Thiem two sets to love before losing 6-4 in the fifth in the third round. One year earlier he defeated then-World No. 17 Karen Khachanov in a fifth-set tie-break before falling to Rafael Nadal in a fourth-set tie-break in the fourth round.

Kyrgios played just 15 matches last season and is making a delayed start to this year after withdrawing from this week’s Melbourne Summer Set due to asthma. Spending three or four days in bed with extreme fatigue, he initially thought he had Covid-19, but that thinking was disproved by multiple negative rapid antigen tests.

Still, he didn’t feel well enough to take to the court.

“Last week, with everything floating around these days, obviously I thought it was Covid,” he said. “I was feeling pretty average… I was testing with these rapid tests and all this other stuff, I was testing a lot, came back negative every single time.

“I just wanted to get over that. I still am feeling some effects, like my breathing is a little bit affected. I don’t feel 100 per cent on court as yet… I didn’t want to start last week at like 60 per cent… I didn’t want to go out there and force myself to play under those circumstances.”

Turns out that it was asthma that kept the six-time tour-level title winner sidelined.

“I’ve had asthma my whole life. I didn’t really realise how bad it was until I got tested,” he said. “When I tested at the AIS [Australian institute of Sport] maybe six years ago, they were almost surprised on how bad my asthma was.

“My grandma used to smoke packs of ciggies in the car and her windows were real old, so it took me like ages to roll down the window, and before that happened she had already smoked like two. So I was passive smoking from a young age. So that’s probably why my asthma is pretty bad.”

Kyrgios said that his extended break at home allowed him to fully rehab his knee and get himself into a good mental space ahead of the new season.

“Being home, doing the gym, getting the correct physio… having my team around me and having access to what a professional athlete should have access to [helped]. It feels good now.”

I don’t really dedicate my life to tennis. I take every day how it is, like I just enjoy doing whatever I’m doing. I don’t train just for tennis. I train just for a general happy living. I like to feel good and I like to just enjoy my life.

“I know it sounds ridiculous, but I play a bit of tennis on the side.”

Source link

Shapovalov Neutralises 'Secret Weapon' Safiullin, Gives Canada Lead

  • Posted: Jan 08, 2022

Canada lost its first four matches of this ATP Cup. But Denis Shapovalov on Saturday put his country one win from the championship tie in Sydney.

The dynamic lefty worked hard to neutralise Russia’s “secret weapon”, Roman Safiullin, battling past the World No. 167 6-4, 5-7, 6-4 to give Canada a 1-0 lead in the semi-finals. Felix Auger-Aliassime can now clinch the tie if he upsets World No. 2 Daniil Medvedev in the No. 1 singles match.

It was a tough start to the ATP Cup for Shapovalov, who missed his first singles match as he got up to speed following his quarantine due to a positive Covid-19 test. But the 22-year-old has worked into form and he played his best when it mattered most to take down the gritty Russian.

“Definitely super tough. Obviously Roman is playing with a lot of confidence,” Shapovalov said. “He’s a great player and surely he’s going to have an amazing season, so I’m very happy to get the win. It was definitely very tough.”

Safiullin is competing with more confidence than ever, and he fought hard for his country against Shapovalov. But the Canadian’s firepower — from his serve to baseline game — proved too difficult to overcome in the crucial moments over two hours and 39 minutes.

“I’ve known him for a while because the first time I played qualifying of juniors at the Australian Open, Roman was playing the juniors and he won the tournament. He won the Aussie Open, so he’s a guy I’ve looked up to and I’ve always thought he’s got an unbelievable game,” Shapovalov said. “He’s shown this competition that he definitely should be ranked in the Top 100. The way he was playing today, it was Top 10, Top 20 tennis, it was incredible.”

Team Russia Captain Gilles Cervara helped talk Safiullin through tactical adjustments throughout the match in the Team Zone. In the middle of the second set, Cervara urged his No. 2 singles player to return Shapovalov’s second-serve return from deep in the court if more comfortable, but to step forward for the second ball to avoid forcing shots from far behind the baseline.

That paid dividends, as the 24-year-old increasingly put pressure on his opponent’s serve. For a large portion of the first two sets, Shapovalov powered his way out of trouble. But on Safiullin’s second set point, the World No. 14 hit an overhead into the bottom of the net.

Safiullin sensed an opportunity to press home his momentum and at 2-1 in the third set he earned six break points in a game that lasted nearly 12 minutes. But he did not gain an advantage on any of those points, as Shapovalov took the racquet out of his hand.

Roman Safiullin won two singles matches in group playing coming into the semi-finals.
Photo Credit: Peter Staples/ATP Tour
That game proved absolutely critical. Break there, and Safiullin might have surged to the finish line. Instead, the momentum flipped back to the Canadian’s side of the court, and he broke for a 4-3 lead, which he never relinquished. Shapovalov held to love to close out the match and gave his Team Zone a big fist pump and a “Come on!” to celebrate.

“For sure I felt like I had to buckle down, especially in that game,” Shapovalov said of the 2-1 game. “I just fought through it. I knew if I held that game, the momentum was going to switch quite a lot. That’s exactly what happened. I had a lot of good looks after that on his serve. It was definitely a very crucial game.”

Canada has now won six consecutive matches after losing its first four. Shapovalov is 2-1 in singles, with wins against Safiullin and Germany’s Jan-Lennard Struff. Russia winning from here would not be unprecedented. Jannik Sinner beat Safiullin at No. 2 singles on Thursday, but Russia rallied to triumph and win Group B.

Medvedev leads Auger-Aliassime 2-0 in their ATP Head2Head series. It won’t be their first massive clash, as the Russian emerged victorious against the Canadian in last year’s US Open semi-finals.

Source link