Halep accepts wild card for Wimbledon warm-up event
French Open finalist Simona Halep will make it eight out of the women’s world top 10 appearing at the Wimbledon warm-up,theInternational,after accepting a wild card invitation on Thursday.
The 25-year-old Romanian -ranked second in the world and beaten by the unseeded Latvian Jelena Ostapenko in the French Open final -- joins world number one Angelique Kerber and number three Karolina Pliskova at the tournament in Eastbourne, southern England.
Halep, who had a good clay court season winning in Madrid but losing in the Rome final before her defeat to Ostapenko in three sets in Paris, said she is delighted to get some grass court competition in before Wimbledon after pulling out of this week’s WTA tournament with a sore ankle. Play gets underway on Friday and runs to July 1 whilst Wimbledon begins on July 3. “I am very much looking forward to playing in Eastbourne,” said Halep. “The quality of the draw is very high so I’m hoping for some great matches to give me the best possible preparation ahead of Wimbledon.”
Also in the high quality field are world number six and defending champion Dominika Cibulkova and local girl Johanna Konta, who is ranked one rung below the champion. Halep will also hope to eat into Kerber’s small lead in the world rankings.
Double pleasure for residents of the sleepy seaside resort will be the men’s ATP event which runs at the same time and will be graced by the presence of triple Wimbledon champion Novak Djokovic, who is desperate to find some semblance of form after a quarter-final exit at the French Open.
BOPANNA-DODIG ENTER SEMIS
ten nis Rohan Bopanna and his Croatian partner Ivan Dodig got the better of Australia’s John Peers and Finland’s Henri Kontinen to book their place in the semi-finals of the Aegon Championships here last evening. The Indo-Croatian duo started the quarter-final clash of the Wimbledon warm-up event strongly as they led 7-6 after the first game.
However, Bopanna and Dodig went down in the second before rebounding strongly to eventually clinch a 7-6, 4-6, 10-2, win over the Australian-Finnish duo in a thrilling encounter.
Bopanna and Dodig will now lock horns with the winners of another last-eight clash between the French duo of Julien Benneteau-Edouard Roger-Vasselin and America’s Bryan brothers.
In another men’s doubles clash, India’s Leander Paes and Canada’s Adil Shamasdin also stormed into the last-four after registering a comfortable 7-6 , 6-2, win over the Chilean- Belarusian team of Hans Podlipnik-Castillo and Andrei Vasilevski.
Paes and Shamasdin will take on the Australian duo of Luke Saville and John Millman for a place in final.
TSONGA LATEST STAR TO SLUMP AT QUEEN’S
Jo-Wilfried Tsonga became the latest star to crash out of Queen’s Club as the world number 10 was beaten 6-4, 6-4, by Luxembourg’s Gilles Muller on Wednesday.
After Andy Murray, Stan Wawrinka and Milos Raonic all endured shock first-round defeats on Tuesday, it was Tsonga’s turn to suffer a surprise second-round exit.
Fifth-seeded Tsonga is traditionally a powerful force on grass and finished as Queen’s runner-up in 2011, while twice appearing in the Wimbledon semi-finals.
But the 32-year-old, who has won titles in Lyon, Marseille and Rotterdam in 2017, was out of sorts from start to finish against the big-serving Muller.
It took Muller just 69 minutes to hand Tsonga another frustrating loss on the heels of his embarrassing first-round exit against Renzo Olivo at the French Open.
“Sometimes you cannot do anything because the guy in front of you is doing the right things to make you play in a bad way,” Tsonga said.
NISHIKORI RETIRES INJURED IN HALLE
Japanese world number nine Kei Nishikori was forced to retire injured in the second round of the Wimbledon warm-up tournament in Halle on Thursday. Nishikori, seeded third in the grasscourt tournament, was trailing 3-2 to Russia’s Karen Khachanov when he felt a pain in his hip. The 27-year-old Olympic bronze medallist had hip treatment courtside but in the end was forced to concede defeat.