ATP
seniors competition
McEnroe
overcomes Vilas
LONDON, Dec
4: John McEnroe underlined his
mastery of seniors tennis with a 6-1, 6-4
beating of Guillermo Vilas yesterday in
the opening round of the ATP seniors
competition at Olympia.
Winner of
four events in a row, McEnroe breezed
through the first set in 25 minutes and
was 3-1 up in the second before Vilas,
winner of four Grand Slam events in his
career, fought back.
The
46-year-old argentine won four games in a
row to lead 4-3 before McEnroe responded
with three to take the match.
"I
wasn’t that happy with my
game," McEnroe said.
"I
started to fiddle around a bit in the
second set to give the crowd something to
shout about but I couldn’t afford to
do that on the main tour."
Yannick
Noah saved four match points before
beating fellow Frenchman Guy Forget 6-7
(7-2), 6-4, 13-11 in the opening match.
The one
hour, 25-minute match went into a
tie-break third set, which lasts a
minimum ten points but went to 24.
Noah saved
two match points at 9-7 down, one more at
10-9 and another at 11-10 before winning
on his first match point at 12-11 with a
smash.
The
eight-man competition is split into two
groups.
McEnroe is
grouped with Vilas, Henri Leconte and
Mansour Bahrami, while Noah and forget
are in with pat cash and John Lloyd.
Bahrami
beat Leconte 7-5, 6-7 (7-5), 10-6 and
cash downed Lloyd 6-1, 7-5 in other
matches played yesterday.
Five-time
Wimbledon champion Bjorn Borg was
scheduled to play but pulled out last
week through injury.
McEnroe
has won four consecutive events, putting
him ahead of Jimmy Connors at the top of
the senior rankings. Connors has not
played in the European events. (AP)
Indian
women hold Thailand in last practice
match
BANGKOK, Dec 4: Indian women
footballers today played out a 2-all draw
against hosts Thailand at Thammasat
Stadium in their final preparation for
the tough opening match against south
korea in Group B’ for the Asian
Games competition to be held from
December 5 to 17 at various venues.
The Indian
girls, playing their first international
rivals after they finished fifth in the
Asian championship at Guanzhou in China
in December last year, missed quite a few
chances before rallying from two goals
down to draw through a self-goal and a
strike by Lokeswari Devi.
India,
lodged with Asian champions and gold
medal favourites China, Chinese Taipei
and Korea, see the first match against
Korea as the crucial tie from where they
can build their medal hopes. Group
A’ comprises Vietnam, Thailand,
Japan and North Korea.
Our
preparation in Patiala and Calcutta went
off well, but without international
matches one cannot predict. The girls are
all fit and waiting for the first match
former India left winger and Chief Coach
Arumainayagam told after the match.
Arumainayagam,
a member of the Chuni Goswami-led Indian
squad which struck gold in the 1962
Jakarta Asiad and who also played in the
1966 Bangkok Games, said ‘there is
lot of expectation that women’s team
will do much better than men. We have to
fulfill them and the and the pressure is
there. (PTI)
Six
straight No.1 years won’t be broken:
Sampras
NEW YORK, Dec 4: Pete Sampras is
sure that his record of six consecutive
years as the World’s No. 1 player
will never be broken.
"I
know what it takes to do it and I
don’t see anyone in today’s
game having the consistency, having the
durability that it takes to be No. 1, not
only for one or two years, but for six
years," Sampras said in a
teleconference yesterday from Los
Angeles.
Sampras
had shared the mark of five successive
years at No. 1 with Jimmy Connors, who
did it from 1974-78. Sampras needed a
closing surge, playing six consecutive
weeks in Europe this fall, to hold off
the challenge of Chilean Marcelo Rios.
"You
need the game, you need the heart, you
need the mind," Sampras said.
"Some guys have two of three. Some
guys have a little of the three, but in
order to do it for six years, you need
everything."
Despite
his record-breaking year, this season was
a bit of a disappointment for Sampras. He
won only four titles, his fewest in a
single season since 1991. After winning a
record-tying fifth Wimbledon, he remains
one away from tying Roy Emerson’s
all-time mark of 12 Grand Slam Singles
Titles.
"This
year was a little inconsistent,"
said Sampras, whose record in the majors
US Open semifinals, Australian Open
quarterfinals, French Open second round
reflected his uneven season.
The season
also ended on a bittersweet note for
Sampras when, after clinching the No. 1
ranking, he lost in the semifinals of the
ATP world championships to Alex Corretja
of Spain.
"I
had mixed emotions when I left there
," said Sampras, who intends to rest
until around Christmas before beginning
preparations for next month’s
Australian Open. "I did what I
wanted to do, but it was not the way I
wanted to end the year." (AP)
Little
master’s helping hand for less
fortunate brethren
MUMBAI, Dec 4: The needy
sportspersons in the country who have
made their mark, now have a new supporter
in Sunil Gavaskar.
The
legendary batsman last night announced
setting up of a foundation,
"champs", to help those who
brought fame to the country but now find
it difficult to make the two ends meet.
Champs,
which is an acronym for caring, helping,
assisting, motivating and promoting
sports persons, would help the needy
irrespective of the games they
represented, Gavaskar told a press
conference here.
"There
are plenty of foundations for other
fields like education, health, art,
culture and for the disadvantaged but
none to my knowledge specifically for
sports," Gavaskar said while
detailing how the idea germinated in his
mind.
Champs
will extend financial help to the
eligible persons or help them in finding
sponsors besides motivating budding
talents by providing equipment and
facilities, the former India skipper
said.
Besides
Gavaskar, the other trustees of the
foundation are chairman of mid-day
publications Khalid Ansari and former
Sheriff of Mumbai Nana Chudasama.
The
foundation, to be set up with a corpus of
Rs 70 lakh, also expects to rope in the
corporate world for raising funds,
Gavaskar said.
The first
fund raising activity will be a cricket
match with participation of the 1983
World Cup winning team members alongwith
luminaries from the business and showbiz
at the Brabourne stadium here on January
23, 1999. (PTI)
|
