Popular former winner and current top-20 player, David Ferrer of Spain has been confirmed as an entrant for the 2010 Heineken Open.

The 2007 winner of the Heineken Open, Ferrer has always made at least the quarterfinals in all of the five occasions he has played at the tournament.

In 2003 he made the quarters and repeated the effort in 2006, winning in 2007 followed by another quarterfinal in 2008 and a semi-final finish earlier this year.

In the 2007 Heineken Open final Ferrer beat countryman Tommy Robredo 6-4 6-2, becoming the first Spaniard to win the title in Auckland and scoring his first career hard court title in the process.

His best performances in 2009 were two runners-up placings at the strong Barcelona and Dubai events. At Barcelona he beat Tommy Robredo and Fernando Gonzalez before losing to Rafael Nadal in the playoff for the title.

In Dubai he lost to Novak Djokovic in the final after scoring solid victories over Ivan Ljubicic, Philipp Kohlschreiber and Richard Gasquet.

Ferrer remains one of the most consistent performers on the ATP Tour and in February last year reached a career high ranking of four in the world.

He spent a full year inside the top 10 breaking into the hallowed ground in September 2007, having first made the top 20 two years earlier. Aside from a brief period, Ferrer has been a permanent member of the top 20 ranking club since 2005.

“David is very popular in Auckland and has been adopted by the crowds, particularly the female fans,” says Heineken Open tournament director, Richard Palmer. “He has been inside the world’s top five players, which is no mean feat, and his record at the Heineken Open speaks for itself He also gives 100 percent on every point and has shown great support of the tournament. It is always good to have a player of his statue return.”

Ferrer, a native of Valencia like Juan Carlos Ferrero has been a vital member of the Spanish Davis Cup team over the years and will be keen to push for a place in his nation’s team in just a few weeks time against Slovakia.

Already confirmed for the 2010 Heineken Open are former world No3 David Nalbandian as well as current No15 Tommy Robredo of Spain and countryman Juan Carlos Ferrero a former world No1 and Grand Slam winner.

The Heineken Open will be held at the ASB Tennis Centre, January 11-16, 2010.
Sourced via 3news.co.nz

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As a boy, Andy Murray showed just how much he idolised Andre Agassi by wearing denim shorts and a baseball cap with a fake ponytail attached to the back.

And the Scot has offered a sympathetic view of the Las Vegan’s confession that he took crystal meth and lied to avoid a ban after a positive dope test.

“No one wants drugs in sport, but everyone makes mistakes,” said Murray, who indicated he would judge Agassi as a tennis player and from the time he spent with the former Wimbledon champion.

Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal have been critical of Agassi, but Murray did not condemn his boyhood idol.

“I loved Andre, met him numerous times, and he was unbelievably nice to me. I practised with him a lot. I guess it’s something he has to deal with himself. He’s entitled to say whatever he wants, and I wish him the best,” said Murray, who was speaking in Valencia, where he will play his first ranking tournament since the US Open in early September, after withdrawing from a couple of events in Asia to rest his injured wrist.

For all the money that can be made from sales of tennis books – Agassi’s stories about taking drugs and wearing wigs should sell a few copies of his autobiography, and Serena Williams, the winner of the season-ending Sony Ericsson Championships, flew overnight from Doha to London to promote her own memoir – actually going on court and playing the game can also top up your bank balance.

Williams earned close to £1 million for a week’s work by the Persian Gulf. Serena was a 6-2, 7-6 winner over her sister Venus, last season’s champion, and as she was unbeaten during the group stages she earned the maximum £940,000, which is more than she received for winning this year’s Wimbledon title.

In an extract from his book, Agassi, who has already admitted using crystal meth in 1997, disclosed that he swallowed a pill that his father gave him before a tournament in Chicago, even though his brother, Phil, had warned him that it could have been speed, an illegal drug.

Murray said: “I don’t really want to get into it. I don’t think any of the players expected it, but you’ve got to move on.”

He was not sure whether Agassi’s revelations would change how the public view the American.

“For me, I judge him as a tennis player, he was great, a great player, one of the best of all time, and I judge him from the experiences I’ve had with him,” said Murray, who opens his tournament against Spain’s Daniel Gimeno-Traver, a wild card.

Murray does not believe that tennis has a “big” drugs problem. “I don’t think it’s a big problem like it is in other sports,” he said.

Meanwhile British pair Colin Fleming and Ken Skupski picked up their second ATP World Tour title on Sunday at the St Petersburg Open.

The duo fought back from a set down to beat French pair Jeremy Chardy and Richard Gasquet 2-6 7-5 10-4.

Fleming and Skupski have enjoyed a breakthrough season, winning their debut main tour title in Metz in September and climbing towards the world’s top 50 in the ATP doubles rankings.
Sourced via telegraph.co.uk

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Former No.1 Martina Hingis won’t make a comeback to competitive tennis.

The 29-year old Hingis, who retired after getting a two-year ban in 2007 for testing positive for cocaine, said Tuesday in an interview with L’Equipe that she is happy with her new life.

Hingis said: “I’ve got a nice house, my four horses. On the tour, I had no life.”

Belgian Kim Clijsters recently made a successful comeback, winning the US Open after having her first child while compatriot Justine Henin announced her comeback to professional tennis last month.

Hingis added that even without having tested positive, she would likely have retired.

“If I had won the four grand slam tournaments, maybe I would have continued,” she said. “But I was on downslope. And I was suspended for two years, and that was it.”

Hingis, who spent 209 weeks at No.1 in the women’s rankings and won five grand slam singles titles, said she went through hard times during her suspension.

“I didn’t have the right to play any competition, even in an other Olympic sport,” she said.

“I didn’t have the right to feature in equestrian competition, even at an amateur level. I’m not sure I have completely recovered.”

Hingis added that she learned that her suspension was over on September 30, her birthday, a few days after undergoing a doping test at her home.

“They thought maybe, like you, that I was planning a second comeback,” she said.

Hingis quit tennis for the first time in 2002 because of foot and leg injuries. When she returned to the circuit in 2006, Hingis reached two grand slam quarterfinals, won two smaller tournaments and finished the year ranked No.7.
Sourced via brisbanetimes.com.au

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YOU didn’t know where to look at Hermes‘ spring-summer 2010 ready-to-wear show Wednesday: At the long, lean silhouettes on the grass-covered runway or at the spirited tennis match taking place at the far end.

Models sporting sweatbands and vertiginous heels utterly unsuited for sport and carrying tennis balls in oversized versions of the label’s legendary Birkin bag with old-school wooden rackets and balls inside skulked down the catwalk.

After their passage, two of the models played a mock match on the real grass which covered everything in the hall where the show was held. Even the bleachers were blanketed in grass, and the audience of hundreds of fashion journalists, stylists and buyers sat on little removable cushions.

On the runway, the looks – in a clean palette of white, navy and rust red – were long and lean, inspired by the robes players used to don between sets. There were also variations on the polo shirt – developed in 1933 by French tennis champion Rene Lacoste – and the sport’s de rigeur short, pleated skirt.

Winning looks included an ankle-length dress in sheer navy worn over a leotard cut like an old-fashioned bathing suit and worn by Czech supermodel Eva Herzigova and a flippy little skirt in paper thin leather – the signature material of the house, which began as a saddlemaker.

Designer Jean Paul Gaultier, who also showed his eponymous line of hip-hop-infused looks last weekend, said he was inspired on by a French tennis woman from the 1930s that Hermes outfitted.
Sourced via straitstimes.com

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Sunday night’s U.S. Open women’s championship between Denmark’s Caroline Wozniacki and Kim Clijsters  proved to be a dazzler of an event.

Clijsters had a fantastic run to win the Open title with a 7-5, 6-3 . She becomes the first unseeded women to win the U.S. Open and a hero to working mothers across the globe.

She was quoted as saying: It still seems so surreal. In my third tournament back, I won my second Grand Slam. It wasn’t the plan. I just wanted to come here and get a feel for it all over again, to play a Grand Slam so I could start next year without having all new experiences. It means the world, and I’m just so glad that I’m able to share it with my husband who wasn’t here a few years ago, and with my whole group who is here. And also sharing it with our daughter, of course, is the greatest thing ever.”

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We are looking for your nominations for the best looking sport babes in the world. The nominations can include sport babes from around the globe, from any country, from any sporting code-the more the merrier.

Nominations close on 30 September 2009.

Send your nominations to to us by filling out the form below. You may nominate up to 3 athletes per time.

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The post-Wimbledon lull has not been much of a lull at all, with a summer of cocaine, groupies, babies, knee injuries and driving tests.

Then there was the news that writer James Lever, who is on the Man Booker Prize long-list for Me Cheeta, a spoof Hollywood memoir by a chimp, has been working on a novella about Bjorn Borg’s mental state after taking early retirement, which will be “rather like Ulysses, with the story of his sexual life compressed into an afternoon”.

Tennis has gone all soap-opera on us.The coming days, though, should see most leading players hitting tennis balls in public again. A number return to the match courts next week, with Andy Murray back from a mid-season break to play on the cement of Montreal.

It will be his first professional tennis since he lost to Andy Roddick in the Wimbledon semi-finals five weeks ago. But Murray is unlikely to excite the wider tennis world as much as the appearance of Richard Gasquet.

On Thursday, the International Tennis Federation appealed against the ruling by an independent anti-doping tribunal that allowed Gasquet, who tested positive for cocaine at a tournament in Miami in March, to return to the tour.

The tribunal panel of three lawyers concluded last month that “it is more likely than not” that the cocaine entered Gasquet’s system when he kissed “a girl called Pamela” in a nightclub the night before, after accepting his evidence that he had kissed ‘Pamela’ at least seven times that evening.

The tribunal ruled that, because of those French kisses, Gasquet had inadvertently consumed no more than “a grain of salt” of cocaine. Gasquet could have been suspended from tennis for two years, but he was instead given a ban of two and a half months.

The ITF have confirmed that, “jointly with the World Anti-Doping Agency”, they have appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport over the tribunal’s decision.

Gasquet’s tennis life could also be complicated by legal action from ‘Pamela’. A lawyer claiming to represent ‘Pamela’ has been quoted as saying that Gasquet defamed her with his evidence at the hearing.

“My client has been dragged through the mud,” the lawyer has been quoted as saying. “She has become an alibi.”

Back in Montreal, the Association of Tennis Professionals expect Roger Federer to compete in the Canadian tournament, a Masters-level event, even though he became a father of two just a couple of weeks ago when the Wimbledon champion and world No 1’s wife, Mirka, gave birth to twin girls.

It was always Murray’s intention to have a month or so off, but he has not been idle. The world No 3 has passed his driving test – “so stay off the road, guys” – he played for the North of Scotland at a county competition in Eastbourne, and has spent the past fortnight at a mid-season training camp in Miami with his regular coach, Miles Maclagan, and coaching consultant Alex Corretja.

This has been an opportunity to top up his fitness levels, knowing that this summer’s tournaments in North America will be key to Murray’s year – and he has plenty of ranking points to defend.

Last summer he reached the semi-finals of the Masters event in Canada, which was played in Toronto, won his first career Masters title by beating Novak Djokovic in the Cincinnati final, and then appeared in his first grand slam final, finishing as US Open runner-up to Federer.

Come September in New York, Murray could become the first British man to win a grand slam singles title since Fred Perry was the 1936 US Open champion – yes, even on the other side of the Atlantic, Murray won’t be able to get away from talk of Perry, 1936 and all that.

Sourced via telegraph.co.uk

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