San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
McDonald falls short in Delray Beach
A day after defeating top-seeded Juan Martin del Potro at the ATP Tour’s Delray Beach (Fla.) Open, Piedmont native Mackenzie McDonald ran out of steam, falling to Radu Albot 3-6, 6-0, 6-0 in the semifinals Saturday night.
In the process, Albot became the first Moldovan to reach an ATP final.
“I think this is a great achievement,” Albot said. “This was my third semifinal and I was successful this time. I’ve been a lot of years the first player for my country to carry the flag everywhere in the world.”
Albot will face England’s Daniel Evans in the final after Evans beat second-seeded John Isner 3-6, 6-2, 6-3. Isner held serve in all 31 service games he played this week until Evans broke him three times.
“I just play every match as it comes,” Evans said. “I know it sounds very cliche.”
It was the 40th tourlevel match victory for Evans, who was suspended from the tour for a year in April 2017 after testing positive for cocaine.
“You have to stay resilient in the sport because it’s so up-and-down,” Evans said. “Obviously, my downfall was by my own wrongdoing.”
Belinda Bencic earned her first WTA title in 3½ years, beating Petra Kvitova 6-3, 1-6, 6-2 in the final of the Dubai Championships. Bencic beat second-ranked Simona Halep and two-time defending champion Elina Svitolina earlier in the tournament.
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No. 1 Cal wins Big Splash
The No. 1 Cal men’s swimming and diving team set three pool records — including one by senior Andrew Seliskar in his final home dual meet — and the Bears rolled past No. 7 Stanford 172-122 at Spieker Aquatics Complex.
Seliskar won the 200yard butterfly in 1 minute, 41.89 seconds, breaking the pool mark of 1:43.91.
Sean Grieshop set the pool record in the 400 individual medley (3:48.36) and the Bears’ 200 freestyle relay team of Pawel Sendyk, Ryan Hoffer, Seliskar and Michael Jensen set a new pool standard in 1:17.75.
The Bears (6-0) won 11 individual events, with Seliskar the only multiple winner. He also took the 100 butterfly in 46.05.
Stanford’s Jack Levant also won two individual events, the 200 freestyle (46.66) and 500 freestyle (4:18.53).
Motor sports: Kyle Busch broke a tie with Ron Hornaday Jr. for the NASCAR Truck Series victory record at Atlanta Motor Speedway, winning No. 52 in a race delayed by rain with nine laps to go.
Busch is set to make his 500th career NASCAR Cup start Sunday, and has 195 career wins across three series.
Christopher Bell led all but 20 laps while routing the field to win the NASCAR Xfinity Series race at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
Skiing: At Crans-Montana, Switzerland, Olympic champion Sofia Goggia won the first World Cup downhill of the postLindsey Vonn era.
Nicole Schmidhofer extended her lead in the downhill standings by placing third, 0.52 of a second behind Goggia. Overall World Cup leader Mikaela Shiffrin skipped the weekend.
Soccer: Lionel Messi recorded his 50th hat trick for club and country in a 4-2 victory for Barcelona at Sevilla, helping Barcelona take a big step toward retaining the Spanish league title.
Messi has a leagueleading 25 goals and it was his 44th hat trick for Barcelona.
Kylian Mbappe scored twice to take his French league-leading tally to 22 goals as host Paris SaintGermain beat Nimes 3-0 to move 17 points clear at the top.
Bayern Munich defeated Hertha Berlin 1-0 to tie Borussia Dortmund for the lead in the Bundesliga. Dortmund can restore its three-point lead with a home win over Bayer Leverkusen on Sunday.