Injured Nadal out of French Open

Tennis: Injured Nadal out of French Open as Murray, Wawrinka cruise

Nine-time champion Rafael Nadal rocked the French Open when he pulled out with a left wrist injury as Andy Murray and defending champion Stan Wawrinka moved closer to a semi-final showdown.

PARIS: Nine-time champion Rafael Nadal rocked the French Open on Friday (May 27) when he pulled out with a left wrist injury as Andy Murray and defending champion Stan Wawrinka moved closer to a semi-final showdown.

Nadal, 29, said he had been playing with an anaesthetic injection in the wrist in the first two rounds and that MRI scans had shown that the injury to the tendon was getting worse.

"It's not broken, but if I continue to play it will be 100 percent broken in a few days," said an emotional Nadal, the fourth seeded winner of 14 majors. "To win the tournament I need five more matches, and the doctor says that's 100% impossible."

Nadal, plagued by knee and wrist injuries througout his career, added: "This is a very bad position, but that's life.

"It's obvious that if it's not Roland Garros I would not take risks on playing the first two days, but it is the most important event of the year for me so we tried our best."

Despite his latest setback, the charismatic Spaniard said he will keep playing although his participation at Wimbledon next month is now in serious doubt.

"This is a tough moment, but it's not the end," said Nadal, who won the first of his nine French Opens as a 19-year-old in 2005.

Nadal's withdrawal gives compatriot Marcel Granollers a walkover into the last 16.

It's also a huge boost to world number one Novak Djokovic's hopes of lifting a first French Open crown.

Nadal and Djokovic were seeded to meet in the semi-finals next Friday -- the date of the Spaniard's 30th birthday.

Second seed Murray cut down Croatian giant Ivo Karlovic to reach the last-16.

Murray, a three-time semi-finalist, had needed two five-set matches and three days of play to get to the last 32.

But on Friday the 29-year-old needed just a shade under two hours to beat 6ft 11in (2.11m) Karlovic 6-1, 6-4, 7-6 (7/3).

It was his seventh win in seven matches against the 37-year-old as Murray goes on to face John Isner of the United States.

"At the end it was very close. I got off to a quick start and against someone like Ivo that's very important," said Murray.

Third seed Wawrinka, scheduled to face Murray in the semi-finals, enjoyed a 6-4, 6-3, 7-5 win over France's Jeremy Chardy.

The Swiss next goes up against Victor Troicki of Serbia.

Kei Nishikori of Japan also reached the last 16 with a 6-3, 6-4, 3-6, 2-6, 6-4 win over Spain's Fernando Verdasco.

The fifth seed, a quarter-finalist in 2015, will play Richard Gasquet after the Frenchman defeated Australian Nick Kyrgios 6-2, 7-6 (9/7), 6-2.

Canada's eighth seed Milos Raonic overcame a left hip injury to defeat Slovakian lucky loser Andrej Martin 7-6 (7/4), 6-2, 6-3.

KVITOVA OUT

Raonic, a quarter-finalist in 2014, next faces 55th-ranked Albert Ramos-Vinolas after the Spaniard stunned American 23rd seed Jack Sock 6-7 (2/7), 6-4, 6-4, 4-6, 6-4.

Ramos-Vinolas, 28, had not won a match at Roland Garros since 2011 before this year.

In the women's tournament, Polish second seed Agnieszka Radwanska reached the last 16 with a 6-2, 6-7 (6/8), 6-2 win over Barbora Strycova of the Czech Republic and now tackles Tsvetana Pironkova of Bulgaria.

Spanish fourth seed and last year's Wimbledon runner-up Garbine Muguruza won the last nine games to knock out Belgium's Yanina Wickmayer 6-3, 6-0.

Muguruza, a quarter-finalist in the last two years, next faces 2009 champion Svetlana Kuznetsova who beat Russian Fed Cup teammate Anastasia Pavlychenkova 6-1, 6-4.

Romanian sixth seed Simona Halep, the runner-up to Maria Sharapova in 2014, needed three sets to see off 18-year-old Japanese player Naomi Osaka 4-6, 6-2, 6-3.

Halep, 24, next faces 2010 finalist Sam Stosur who defeated 2015 runner-up Lucie Safarova of the Czech Republic 6-3, 6-7 (0/7), 7-5.

But Czech 10th seed Petra Kvitova became the fourth top 10 seed to exit by the third round after she lost 6-0, 6-7 (3/7), 6-0 to American world number 108 Shelby Rogers.

Kvitova, a semi-finalist in 2012, committed 36 unforced errors as 23-year-old Rogers reached the last 16 of a Grand Slam for the first time.

Rogers, who had put out Czech 17th seed Karolina Pliskova in the first round, next plays Romanian 25th seed Irina-Camelia Begu.

With Halep also through, it's the first time since 1997 that two Romanian women have made the last-16.

source: www.channelnewsasia.com

French Open

Cranky Kyrgios pulls himself together.

Nick Kyrgios

PARIS — It all started with what Nick Kyrgios insisted was an innocuous, if admittedly loud, directive to a ball kid to retrieve a towel between points — shouted above the din of spectators at the French Open’s cozy Court 1.

Chair umpire Carlos Ramos considered Kyrgios’ bark during a first-set tiebreaker Sunday too forceful and assessed a code violation warning for unsportsmanlike conduct. That led to a long-running, and occasionally curse-filled, argument from the 21-year-old Australian, who at one point said the official was “unbelievably biased.”

Much as the 17th-seeded Kyrgios made of the disagreement at the time — he could have been docked a point for his colorful language — he managed to set it aside eventually and worked his way through a 7-6 (6), 7-6 (6), 6-4 victory over 124th-ranked Marco Cecchinato of Italy with the help of 16 aces, providing a bit of a spark on an otherwise dreary, drenched Day 1 at Roland Garros.

“It didn’t put me off too much,” Kyrgios said of his flap with Ramos. “With someone like me that’s pretty emotional, it can frustrate me a little bit, but I felt like I dealt with it pretty well.”

Of the 32 matches on Sunday’s schedule, his was one of only nine completed before showers created a rain delay of more than 2½ hours in the afternoon, interrupting matches involving No. 5 Kei Nishikori, No. 23 Jack Sock and others.

Winners included two-time Wimbledon champion Petra Kvitova, who acknowledged feeling “kind of down mentally” and was one game from bowing out against 59th-ranked Danka Kovinic of Montenegro before taking the final three for a 6-2, 4-6, 7-5 escape. Also advancing was No. 19 Benoit Paire of France, who needed five sets to get past 137th-ranked qualifier Radu Albot of Moldova.

Right after the ruling that bothered him, Kyrgios asked whether he was being sanctioned for raising his voice in the direction of the ball kid, explaining that “the crowd was too loud for him to hear me."

Ramos nodded.

“Really?” Kyrgios asked.

“It’s not that you said, ‘Towel!’ too loud,” Ramos said. “It’s the way you said it.”


Moments later, Kyrgios raised the topic again, insisting to Ramos, “I did nothing wrong” and referring to an episode this month at the Italian Open, when No. 1-ranked Novak Djokovic reached out to grab the arm of an official who had stepped onto the court to examine a disputed ball mark.

“When Djokovic pushed the line umpire out of the way, he gets nothing,” Kyrgios said, punctuating the complaint with a swear word.

At his news conference afterward, Kyrgios was asked about the Djokovic reference and replied: “I mean, I think we all know, in this room, if that was me that did that, it would be an absolute circus. But if he did it, you know, nothing really happened of it. It speaks for itself.”

He also offered a hint of a conciliatory tone, saying “it’s not an easy job out there” for chair umpires and that he “might have to be a bit more patient” with ball kids.

Kyrgios is known for spectacular play — he’s beaten Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer and twice reached Grand Slam quarterfinals — and boorish behavior. He was placed on probation by the ATP last year, with the risk of a 28-day suspension, for comments toward 2015 French Open champion Stan Wawrinka during a match in Montreal.

Not everything came easily against Cecchinato. Kyrgios converted just 1 of 11 break points. He slipped on the damp court in the sixth game and tumbled into the net, staying down until Cecchinato offered a hand. And Kyrgios was forced to save two set points in the second tiebreaker.

Still, he played well enough to eliminate Cecchinato, who is 0-4 in Grand Slam matches and 3-18 at all tour-level tournaments and said he didn’t pay attention to the Kyrgios-Ramos exchanges.

Cecchinato also offered a nuanced defense of Kyrgios’ character.

“I like him, because he’s arrogant and sure of himself. ... He knows he’s good,” Cecchinato said. “’Arrogant’ in a good sense — he knows he’s strong and one of the best players in the world. ‘Arrogant’ not in a pejorative way, but in a positive way.”


source: www.journaltimes.com