TENNIS – Bits & Pieces from the Wolrd of Tennis. Cornet and Garcia fly the flag for France in the WTA and Spain collects 2 ATP titles. Maria Sharapova starts a new business venture and the Bryans a 3 titles away from the century. Joshua Bosco
Winners in Katowice, Bogotá, Casablanca & Houston
In Katowice Alize Cornet saved a match point to defeat Camila Giorgi, who was playing in her first WTA final, 7-6(3) 5-7 7-5 after a tightly contested match. It was Cornet’s fourth career title and third time lucky against an Italian player in a final, having previously lost to Flavia Pennetta (Acapulco 2008) and Francesca Schiavone (Strasbourg 2012).
In Bogotá another French player won the trophy with Caroline Garcia beating World No.9 Jelena Jankovic 6-3 6-4. This was Garcia’s first WTA-level final and a perfect ending for her fantastic week in Colombia, where she also won the doubles title on Saturday – again in her first ever doubles final.
In an all-Spanish final in Casablanca, No.8 seed Guillermo Garcia Lopez won his third career title defeating No.4 seed Marcel Granollers 5-7 6-4 6-3 in a match lasting over two and a half hours.
In another Spanish contest in Houston, Fernando Verdasco beat Nicolas Almagro 6-4 7-6(4). Verdasco saved five break points in the second set when serving on 4-5 to push the set to a tiebreak in which he won the last four points to come back from a minibreak down and close the match in 1h 53m.
Who’s playing where
The ATP Tour heads back to Monte Carlo this week for the beginning of the three month clay and grass European swing.
The Top 6 players in the world (Nadal, Djokovic, Wawrinka, Federer, Berdych and Ferrer) will all be in the main draw this year, after Federer accepted a surprise late wild card earlier this week following a two-year absence from the prestigious tournament.
The other two Top 8 seeds are Milos Raonic and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, while notable absentees are Richard Gasquet (who withdrew with a back injury), Juan Martin del Potro (who is recovering from his wrist surgery), Andy Murray (who decided not to defend last year’s third round points), John Isner, Tommy Haas and Kei Nishikori.
Many women will play for their Fed Cup teams later this week, while some of them will fly to Kuala Lumpur for an International Series tournament.
In Kuala Lumpur, defending champion Karolina Pliskova will be joined by World No.10 Dominika Cibulkova, Zhang Shuai, Kimiko Date-Krumm and Donna Vekic while Andrea Hlavackova, Jovana Jaksic and Venus Williams have withdrawn before the start of the tournament.
In the Fed Cup semi-finals the Czech Republic (Kvitova, Safarova, Koukalova and Hlavackova) will take on Italy (Errani, Vinci, Knapp and Giorgi) in Ostrava, with the Italian team leading the Head2Head 5-4.
Germany (Kerber, Petkovic, Georges and Groenefeld) will visit Brisbane to face Australia (Stosur, Dellacqua, Barty and Sanders), with the Aussies leading the Head2Head 8-4.
Sharapova’s new venture
Maria Sharapova’s ranking may be sinking lately but her business empire is certainly on the rise: the Russian player will soon become the co-owner of Supergoop!, a skincare company which focuses on the prevention of skin cancer.
“I thought the idea of being an equity owner would be the next phase in my business development” said Sharapova, who launched her own brand of sweets, Sugarpova, back in 2012.
The Bryan brothers are now just three tournaments away from their 100th title, after winning their 97th trophy together in Houston on Saturday.
The Bryans beat Spanish duo David Marrero and Fernando Verdasco 4-6 6-4 11-9 in the final, extending their winning streak to 17 matches.
