Pegula qualifies for the Miami Open semifinals

Tennis

Forget the three setters. These days, Jessica Pegula doesn’t even need second games.

The 16th seed reached the semifinals at the Miami Open, benefiting from the second consecutive shock finish. He won the quarterfinal against fifth seed Paula Padusa on Wednesday after Padusa retired from five matches in the first set.

Pegula played four games in this tournament and needed only five and a half sets to achieve those victories. Bye in the first round, she won the next two matches in straight sets and her match ended in the fourth round when the unseeded Anilina Kalinina retired after Pegola won the first set 6-0.

Then came Wednesday when Padusa lost 4-1.

“Of course it is not good to win this way,” Pegola said. “It’s the first time I’ve done it with her and I really wanted to play because she’s had a great year.”

Padusa, who was ranked 71st in the world at this point last year, will move up to number three as a career best when the computer numbers are updated on Monday. He would have gone to second place if he had beaten Pegula.

Padusa said she woke up on Monday not feeling well and wasn’t sure she could play fourth against Linda Frohvertova that day. Padusa managed to win the match, winning the match 6-2 6-3, but it was clearly not the same on Wednesday.

“It’s an amazing competition,” Pegula said. “I think we all saw that last round where she obviously wasn’t feeling well and was able to beat her. I like it very much and I hope that next time we play when we are healthy, comfortable and have a great game.

Pegula will face second seed Ija Swiatek, who will become number one in the world rankings next week, in the semifinals on Thursday night. Swiatek, seeded 28, defeated Petra Kvitova 6-3 6-3 in the last women’s quarterfinal.

The other women’s semi-final takes place on Thursday afternoon, with 22nd seed Belinda Bencic taking on unseeded Naomi Osaka.

The quick end of the Pegula-Padusa match left the stadium empty for nearly two hours, until ninth-seeded Yannick Sener – who reached the final in Miami last year – faced unseeded Francisco Cerondolo in the quarters. male final.

And after 22 minutes, that game is over, also in just five games. Cerondolo took the lead when Sener retired 4-1 with blisters on his right foot.

“I couldn’t move… I tried, but it didn’t work,” Sener said.

In the last men’s quarterfinals, sixth seed Casper Rudd had a semifinal match with Serondolo. Ruud defeated No. 2 Alexander Zverev 6-3, 1-6, 6-3.

COVID-19: Dominic Thiem, the 2020 US Open champion, said he tested positive for COVID-19 after his first game in more than nine months.

Tim lost 6-3 6-4 to Pedro Cachin at the Andalus Open Championship on Tuesday’s low-key Challenger Tour. The 28-year-old Austrian missed out with wrist and hand injuries and made his last appearance in June.

Tim posted on social media that he “started feeling unwell and not having a good night” after dinner on Tuesday and had mild symptoms. He said that he tested positive on Wednesday.

Thiem was runner-up at the French Open in 2018 and 2019, losing both times to Rafael Nadal, and at the Australian Open in 2020, losing to Novak Djokovic.

Later that year, Tim claimed his first Grand Slam title at Flushing Meadows, coming back from a two-set delay to defeat Alexander Zverev in the fifth-set tiebreak in the final.

Once ranked third, Thiem is currently at number 50.

In the 2012 London Olympics final, 80,203 people watched the United States defeat Japan 2-1 to win the gold medal.

The club’s previous record was 60,739 in a La Liga match between Atletico Madrid and Barcelona at Atletico’s Wanda Metropolitano in 2019.

Barcelona advanced to the semi-finals 8-3 on aggregate after winning the first leg 3-1 in Madrid last week.

golf

The Women’s Patriots of Augusta: California teenager Anna Davis earned a 5-point closing berth at the Champions Retreat and shared the lead with second-place Alabama student Benedetta Moresco of Italy in 2 Under 70 in a rough and stormy start against the Augusta Women’s National Amateur.

Only five players in the elite field of amateurs from around the world managed to break parity.

Rose Zhang, the No. 1 amateur in women’s golf and the top seed, struggled with the new Greens en route to 76. It was a rough start, though with results so high, Zhang was unable to make it out of the tournament. She was two shots short of the cut line.

The top 30 players from the 60-player field after Thursday’s second round at Champions Retreat advance to the final round on Saturday at Augusta National. The tiebreaker determines 30th place in the event of a tie.

soccer

Women’s Champions League: Women’s football celebrated a milestone when a world record crowd of over 91,000 watched Barcelona’s 5-2 victory over Real Madrid at the Camp Nou.

Organizers said 91,553 people attended in Barcelona, ​​Spain. The previous record for any women’s game was 90.185 in the 1999 World Cup final between the United States and China at the Rose Bowl.

In the 2012 London Olympics final, 80,203 people watched the United States defeat Japan 2-1 to win the gold medal.

The club’s previous record was 60,739 in a La Liga match between Atletico Madrid and Barcelona at Atletico’s Wanda Metropolitano in 2019.

The previous Women’s Champions League record was 50,212 matches between Lyon and Frankfurt in Munich in 2012.