BRISBANE: American Andy Roddick held off a magnificent fight-back from Radek Stepanek to claim a thrilling 7-6 (7/2), 7-6 (9/7) victory in the final of the Brisbane International on Sunday.
Stepanek saved six match points in the second set tiebreak but couldn’t save a seventh and when he served a double fault at 7-8, Roddick claimed the first title of the year.
The title is the 28th of Roddick’s career and his first
The win also put an end to Stepanek’s nine-match winning streak in Brisbane, which included taking the inaugural title at the Queensland Tennis Center in 2009.
Cilic retains title
Meanwhile in Chennai, second-seeded Marin Cilic of Croatia retained the Chennai Open title Sunday with a 7-6 (2), 7-6 (3) victory over third-seeded Swiss player Stanislas Wawrinka in the final.
The 21-year-old Cilic repeated his feat of winning a title in the new season’s first week for the second successive year.
“It’s been a good start to the year, winning back-to-back Chennai Open titles will surely boost my confidence,” said Cilic. “This is an ideal preparation for the Australian Open.” With this victory, Cilic emulated Spaniard Carlos Moya’s feat of winning successive titles here in 2004 and 2005.
A capacity crowd at the Nungambakam Stadium witnessed the keenly-contested three-hour encounter that saw world No. 14 Cilic defeating Wawrinka for the first time in five meetings.
The title triumph earned Cilic $68,450, while Wawrinka got $35,980.
“I’m proud to have won two titles here. It wasn’t easy out there today, I had to work hard for victory,” said Cilic.
“Wawrinka also had a good week, but this was my day,” he said.
Wawrinka said Cilic deserved to be the winner as he played exceptionally well.
The second-seeded Spanish pair of Marcel Granollers and Santiago Ventura won the doubles title, defeating Janko Tipsarevic of Serbia and Yen-Hsun Lu of Taiwan 7-5, 6-2 in the final.
Kuznetsova has it easy
Meanwhile in Sydney, French Open champion Svetlana Kuznetsova won her first-round match at the Sydney International on Sunday, but was more concerned with a gambling-related ban to a fellow Russian player.
Kuznetsova, who had a 6-4, 6-7 (3), 7-5 win over Alisa Kleybanova, said after the match that the WTA Tour should give players some guidance after Ekaterina Bychkova was handed a 30-day ban for failing to report an offer to influence the outcome of a match.
On Friday, the Tennis Integrity Unit fined Bychkova $5,000 and barred the Russian from playing for 30 days, saying she failed to report that she was asked to provide inside information and throw matches.
An anti-corruption hearing officer said there was no evidence Bychkova accepted any compensation. She was penalized because she didn’t disclose the offer until being questioned by investigators from the Tennis Integrity Unit, which was formed by the Grand Slam committee, International Tennis Federation, and the ATP and WTA Tours.
Defending champion Elena Dementieva also said she was unaware that players have to report approaches from people offering cash to influence games.
“I didn’t know but I do now, not that it matters because I have never experienced anything like that in my career,” said Dementieva, who beat Francesca Schiavone of Italy 6-2, 7-5.
Dementieva will face Daniela Hantuchova in the second round after the unseeded Slovakian player beat Virginie Razzano of France 6-3, 6-0.
Only three first-round women’s matches were scheduled Sunday in the joint ATP-WTA tournament.
Top-seeded Serena Williams, who has a first-round bye, is expected to play her first singles match on Tuesday.
Williams was drawn for a potential second-round match against Justine Henin, but Henin injured her left leg in a Brisbane International final loss to fellow Belgian Kim Clijsters on Saturday and had to pull out of the Sydney event.
The top four men’s seeded players in Sydney, including top-seeded Gael Monfils of France and second-seeded Tomas Berdych of the Czech Republic, also had first-round byes.
