Nishikori captures first ATP championship in 3 yrs
BRISBANE, Australia—Kei Nishikori won his first Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) title since Memphis in 2016 with a dominating final set to beat Daniil Medvedev, 6-4, 3-6, 6-2, in the Brisbane International final on Sunday.
The 2014 US Open finalist served for the match at 5-1 in the third set, but Medvedev earned a temporary reprieve when he broke the Japanese player’s serve to extend the match.
But Nishikori, who had lost nine consecutive ATP finals over 52 tournaments in nearly three years, broke the Russian player’s serve on four consecutive points in the final game to clinch the match in just two hours and six minutes at Pat Rafter Arena.
Earlier, Karolina Pliskova won her second Brisbane title, beating Lesia Tsurenko, 4-6, 7-5, 6-2, after coming within just two points of defeat.
Serving for the title at 5-4 Sunday, Tsurenko lost 13 straight points. It came after Tsurenko rolled her ankle in the second game of the deciding set.
Tsurenko was 4-0 in her previous Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) finals. Pliskova won her first Brisbane title two years ago.
Pliskova improved her record in Brisbane to 13-2 and joined Victoria Azarenka (2009, 2016) and Serena Williams (2013-14) as the third woman to win the tournament twice.
Julia Goerges defended her singles title at the WTA Tour’s ASB Classic, ending the amazing run of Canadian qualifier Bianca Andreescu, 2-6, 7-5, 6-1, in Sunday’s final in Auckland, New Zealand.
At first, the 18-year-old Andreesecu, ranked 152, looked likely to continue the form that saw her emerge from the qualifying tournament to beat Australian Open champion Caroline Wozniacki, seven-time Grand Slam champion Venus Williams and third-seeded Hsieh Su-Wei on the way to her first final.
She took the first set in only 30 minutes, unsettling second-seeded Goerges with the same aggressive return game and mixture of strokes which had flummoxed her earlier opponents.
But the tide of the match changed late in the second set as Goerges began to put more first serves in play and to gain more depth with her ground strokes, forcing Andreescu onto the defensive.
In Pune, India, top-seeded Kevin Anderson won his sixth ATP title when he recovered from 5-2 down in the decisive tiebreaker to beat Ivo Karlovic, 7-6 (4), 6-7 (2), 7-6 (5), in the Maharashtra Open final on Saturday.
It was Anderson’s fourth victory in five meetings against Karlovic.
Anderson, of South Africa, lost last year’s final against Gilles Simon but defeated the Frenchman in straight sets on Friday in the semifinals.
Karlovic became the oldest player at 39 to play a tour-level final since 1977, when 43-year-old Ken Rosewall won at Hong Kong.
In another record, Anderson at 6-foot-8 and Karlovic at 6-foot-11 combined to make it the tallest final in the Open era, according to the ATP web site. It beat Anderson versus John Isner at the 2013 Atlanta Open. AP