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Indian Wells: Caroline Wozniacki wins in three sets to reach fourth round

  • Posted: Mar 13, 2018

World number two Caroline Wozniacki reached the fourth round of the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells with victory over Aliaksandra Sasnovich.

Wozniacki, who won her first Grand Slam at this year’s Australian Open, came through 6-4 2-6 6-3.

The 27-year-old Dane needs to win the tournament and hope that top seed Simona Halep fails to reach the final to regain the world number one ranking.

Wozniacki faces Daria Kasatkina, who beat US Open champion Sloane Stephens.

American Stephens has been struggling since breaking through for last year’s major win, and has failed to advance past a quarter-final this year. She was beaten 6-4 6-3 by Russian 20th seed Kasatkina.

Serena Williams saw her comeback ended 6-3 6-4 by sister Venus.

Caroline Garcia also progressed in straight sets against Daria Gavrilova as the French seventh seed beat the Australian 7-5 6-4 in just under two hours.

Former world number one Angelique Kerber beat Russia’s Elena Vesnina 7-5 6-2 to go through, while USA’s Danielle Collins beat Russian Sofia Zhuk 6-4 6-4.

Fourth seed Elina Svitolina fell to Carla Suarez Navarro 7-5 6-3.

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Andy Murray could make injury return at new British events in Glasgow and Loughborough

  • Posted: Mar 13, 2018

Andy Murray could make his return from hip surgery at one of two new indoor events in Britain later this spring.

Murray said after his operation that he hoped to return “around the grass court season, or maybe slightly before”.

The Scot, 30, is unlikely to want to return on physically demanding clay, which precedes the grass court season, and his options elsewhere are limited.

But the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA) has announced two new indoor hard court events in Glasgow and Loughborough.

Both will be staged on the ATP Challenger Tour, the level below the ATP World Tour, with a prize fund of $100,000 (£72,000)

The first will take place at the Scotstoun Tennis Centre in Glasgow between 28 April and 6 May. The second is scheduled for Loughborough University’s Tennis Centre from 19-27 May.

The LTA says the tournaments will provide “quality playing opportunities for British players” in the run up to Wimbledon, but it seems very unlikely they would have been established at short notice had it not been for Murray’s impending return. The LTA has not yet committed to staging the tournaments in future years.

Murray’s management team and the LTA are understood to have been involved in discussions about the creation of these events, even though there can be no guarantee the former world number one will be fit for either. The double Wimbledon champion has said consistently he will not come back until absolutely ready.

He has not played a competitive match since Wimbledon last year and pulled out of this season’s Australian Open with injury before undergoing surgery on 8 January.

He is due to return to the practice court in the next couple of weeks and is planning to head overseas, to an as yet undecided destination, for some warm weather training in April.

A return to competitive tennis on home soil in Glasgow at the end of April would represent a swift recovery from his surgery, but should not yet be ruled out.

Were Murray to return in Loughborough three weeks later, then he would only have one more week to wait for the start of the grass court season, in south-west London.

The Surbiton Trophy is another event on the Challenger Tour – a level Murray has not played at since October 2005.

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Next Gen Champ Chung Continues Surge

  • Posted: Mar 13, 2018

Next Gen Champ Chung Continues Surge

Mar132018

South Korean through to fourth round at Masters 1000 for second time

Combining power and precision with a burgeoning confidence on the big stages, inaugural Next Gen ATP Finals champion Hyeon Chung is through to the fourth round of the BNP Paribas Open for the first time. Experienced Czech 12th seed Tomas Berdych was the 21-year-old’s latest victim on Monday night.

Unlike Chung’s previous match – in which he battled for nearly three hours to get past Dusan Lajovic – he cruised past Berdych 6-4, 6-4. It is his first victory in three FedEx ATP Head2Head meetings with the Czech and the first time he had even taken a set.

Chung had already tasted hard-court success on a big stage this season after he became the first South Korean to reach a Grand Slam semi-final at the Australian Open. His victims in Melbourne included Alexander Zverev and Novak Djokovic before a blister derailed his semi-final match against eventual champion Roger Federer.

You May Also Like: Roger Races Into Fourth Round

Should Chung reach his his first ATP World Tour Masters 1000 quarter-final with a win over No. 30 seed Pablo Cuevas in the fourth round he could earn a hard-court rematch with Federer, provided the defending champion defeated unseeded Frenchman Jeremy Chardy next.

Against Berdych, Chung started the stronger breaking for 3-1 before being reeled in for 4-4. Crunching his service returns, Chung caught Berdych out of position to draw a forehand wide as he broke again for 5-4 and served out the opening set at the 41-minute mark.

Appearing at the BNP Paribas Open for the 14th straight year, 2013 Indian Wells semi-finalist Berdych had reached the quarter-finals or better at three of his four prior events, including the Australian Open.

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But after the Czech was broken early in the second set, it was Chung who carried the momentum to reach the round of 16 at an Masters 1000 event for the second time in his career (Montreal 2017).
His fourth-round opponent, Cuevas, is one win away from reaching back-to-back quarter-finals in Indian Wells. The Uruguayan was leading fifth seed Dominic Thiem 3-6, 6-4, 4-2 before the Austrian retired due to a right foot injury.

Cuevas was coming off a victory over #NextGenATP Canadian Denis Shapovalov and had reached the quarter-finals of the Rio Open and semi-finals of the Brasil Open in Sao Paolo. 
It brings the FedEx ATP Head2Head ledger between Thiem and Cuevas all square at 2-2.

Thiem had won both clashes in 2017 at ATP World Tour Masters 1000 events in Madrid and Rome. The result also ensures top seed and defending champion Roger Federer will not meet an opponent seeded in the Top 10 before at least the semi-finals with No. 23 Chung the highest remaining.

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Roger Federer: World number one reaches Indian Wells last 16

  • Posted: Mar 13, 2018

World number one Roger Federer reached the last 16 of the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells with a comfortable victory over Serbia’s Filip Krajinovic.

Federer, the defending champion and five-time winner, needed just 58 minutes to wrap up a 6-2 6-1 victory.

The 36-year-old Swiss will face Frenchman Jeremy Chardy next after he beat Adrian Mannarino 7-5 4-6 6-1.

Federer, a 20-time Grand Slam champion, has already won the Australian Open and Rotterdam Open this year.

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Williams sisters meet at Indian Wells, 17 years late

  • Posted: Mar 12, 2018

Serena Williams will play her sister Venus at Indian Wells, 17 years after a scheduled meeting at the tournament sparked a 14-year boycott.

The 29th professional contest between the pair will take place in the first match of Monday’s night session.

Venus has only beaten Serena once since 2009, but the younger sister has just returned after becoming a mother.

The two were due to meet in the semi-final of 2001, but Venus Williams withdrew five minutes before the match.

She cited tendinitis in her knee as her reason for pulling out of the tournament.

And when Venus, accompanied by her father Richard, took her seat to watch her sister play Kim Clijsters in the final two days later, the atmosphere turned sour.

There was booing and jeering, and some of Serena’s unforced errors where cheered as she claimed the title in three sets.

“I literally didn’t even think about it,” Serena replied, when asked whether she was happy the match would finally get to take place.

“That’s, you know, totally gone out of my mind. First of all, 17 years ago seems like forever ago.”

Williams has said she spent “hours crying in the Indian Wells locker room” after the final, and would not return to the tournament until 2015.

In an essay for Time magazine just before her return, she made it clear she feels much of the vitriol was racist in nature.

“The false allegations – that our matches were fixed – hurt, cut and ripped into us deeply. The undercurrent of racism was painful, confusing and unfair,” she wrote.

Venus ended her boycott a year later, and now they are set to meet for a place in the last 16.

Venus, seeded eighth, reached the Wimbledon final, the US Open semi-finals and the championship match of the WTA Finals while Serena was away from the tour.

But Serena says she did not watch a single point on the grounds she gets too nervous.

“I never won a match sitting down,” she explains.

“So if she makes a mistake, a little bit of me dies. So, yeah, I didn’t watch any.”

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Chung, Federer, Thiem Compete Monday In Indian Wells

  • Posted: Mar 12, 2018

Chung, Federer, Thiem Compete Monday In Indian Wells

Mar122018

ATPWorldTour.com breaks down another busy day in the Californian desert

After losing his racquets in transit from Acapulco to Indian Wells, Hyeon Chung was not off to the best start in the Californian desert last week. Fortunately, following a Twitter plea to the airline, the 21-year-old South Korean was reunited with the tools to his trade in time for his second BNP Paribas Open campaign.

On Monday, that campaign steps up a notch when the No. 23 seed squares off against experienced Czech 12th seed Tomas Berdych for a place in the fourth round. It will be the third FedEx ATP Head2Head encounter between the pair with Berdych having claimed both prior matches in straight sets.

View FedEx ATP Head2Head for the 2018 BNP Paribas Open third round & vote for who you think will win! 
Federer vs Krajinovic | Thiem vs Cuevas | Verdasco vs Fritz

Chung is off to a 12-5 start to 2018 and has staked an early claim for a Nitto ATP Finals berth. After his breakout triumph to claim the Next Gen ATP Finals in Milan to finish last season, he carried that momentum Down Under in January, when he became the first from his nation to reach a Grand Slam semi-final at the Australian Open.

It was in Melbourne he took down #NextGenATP German No. 4 seed Alexander Zverev and No. 14 seed Novak Djokovic en route before his run came to an end due to foot blisters during his semi-final clash with Roger Federer. In addition to a breakout Australian Open, he has reached the quarter-finals or better in four of five tournaments this year.

Berdych – making his 14th straight appearance in Indian Wells – has made a typically consistent start to the season with quarter-final showings at the Australian Open (l. to Federer) and in Rotterdam (W/O vs. Goffin) before a semi-final defeat to eventual champion Karen Khachanov in Marseille.

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In his first tournament since his return to No. 1 in the ATP Rankings, defending champion Roger Federer will bid to reach the fourth round when he takes on Serbian 25th seed Filip Krajinovic for the first time. After emerging from a stacked quarter that included Grand Slam champions Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic and Juan Martin del Potro at last year’s BNP Paribas Open, No. 5 seed Dominic Thiem and No. 7 seed Kevin Anderson are the only two fellow Top 10 opponents left in Federer’s half at the third-round stage in 2018.

The Swiss – who has claimed the Australian Open and ABN AMRO World Tennis Tournament in Rotterdam – extended his unbeaten run this season to 13 straight matches after levelling his FedEx ATP Head2Head ledger at 1-1 with Argentine Federico Delbonis in the second round. He is assured of retaining the top spot should he reach the semi-finals in Indian Wells and would pull clear of Novak Djokovic’s Indian Wells tally should he claim a record sixth title.

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After his thrilling upset of No. 3 seed Grigor Dimitrov, Spain’s Fernando Verdasco will look to reach the fourth round in Indian Wells for the third time when he meets #NextGenATP American Taylor Fritz on Stadium 1. The 39th-ranked Verdasco beat the 20-year-old in their only prior FedEx ATP Head2Head meeting.

Verdasco’s best result this season came on clay, where he reached the final of the Rio Open presented by Claro (l. to Schwartzman), while Fritz’s best tour-level result in 2018 is a Delray Beach Open quarter-final run (l. to Shapovalov). So far this week, Fritz has beaten fellow 20 year olds Reilly Opelka and No. 27 seed Andrey Rublev.

Thiem, one of the hardest-working players on the ATP World Tour, is already off to a 17-3 start on the year that includes the Argentina Open title in Buenos Aires (d. Bedene). He leads No. 30 seed Pablo Cuevas 2-1 in their FedEx ATP Head2Head series, but all of their meetings have come on clay courts. Their match is scheduled on Stadium 2 from 6 p.m. local time. Cuevas, 4-3 on hard courts in 2018, recorded a straight sets win over #NextGenATP Canadian Denis Shapovalov and, just like Thiem, is attempting to improve upon a quarter-final run last season.

In the fourth match on Stadium 3, Anderson, with a 12-3 match record in 2018, takes on No. 94-ranked Nicolas Kicker for the first time. The 31-year-old South African picked up his fourth ATP World Tour crown at the New York Open (d. Querrey) and has finished runner-up in Pune (l. to Simon) and at the recent Abierto Mexicano Telcel presentado por HSBC (l. to Del Potro). Kicker beat Jiri Vesely in the first round and No. 26 seed Damir Dzumhur in the second round.

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