12:45 PM ET Associated Press ROME — Nick Kyrgios took full advantage of his crafty game to eliminate Daniil Medvedev 6-3, 3-6, 6-3 in the first round of the Italian Open Tuesday. For his first win on clay this year, Kyrgios was full of smiles as he fired aces and passing shots seemingly at will.
Tennis
11:48 AM ET Associated Press ROME — Serena Williams has withdrawn from the Italian Open ahead of her second-round match against sister Venus due to an old left knee injury. Tournament organizers made the announcement on Tuesday, a day after Serena opened her clay-court season with a straight-sets win over Swedish qualifier Rebecca Peterson. It’s
4:48 PM ET Associated Press American tennis player Nicole Gibbs says she will miss the French Open because of surgery for salivary gland cancer. Gibbs, 26, wrote on Twitter that the procedure is scheduled for Friday and her goal is to return for Wimbledon qualifying in late June. Gibbs, who was born in Ohio and
3:14 PM ET Associated Press ROME — Serena Williams looked sharper than in her previous match in March as she opened her clay-court season at the Italian Open with a routine 6-4, 6-2 win over Swedish qualifier Rebecca Peterson Monday. In March at the Miami Open, Williams needed three sets to beat Peterson. “It’s been
2:40 PM ET Associated Press MADRID — Novak Djokovic defeated Stefanos Tsitsipas 6-3, 6-4 to win his third Madrid Open title Sunday, tying Rafael Nadal for most Masters 1000 trophies with 33. It was the second title of the season for the top-ranked Djokovic, adding to his triumph in the Australian Open. He hadn’t won
4:19 AM ET ESPN staff Serena Williams, speaking about an open letter she wrote to her mother in 2017, said: “Looking at my daughter and looking at my mom, how she went through the negative [feedback] of myself and my body, I don’t know how she did it.” We all know how big a role
4:22 PM ET Associated Press MADRID — Kiki Bertens beat two-time Madrid Open champion Simona Halep 6-4, 6-4 to take the women’s title on Saturday. Last year’s runner-up Bertens defeated Halep for her second title of the year, adding to her victory in St. Petersburg, Russia. The seventh-ranked Dutch became the first woman to win
8:19 PM ET ESPN News Services MADRID — For the third consecutive tournament this season, Rafael Nadal won’t be fighting for a title on his favorite surface. Nadal, the No. 2-ranked player in the world, continued his slump on clay Saturday at the Madrid Open with a third straight semifinal elimination, adding to his worst
4:17 PM ET He had been so close, yet suddenly found himself so far. That was Roger Federer‘s quandary at the end of the second set of his quarterfinal match with Dominic Thiem on Friday at the Madrid Masters. So close to making a very Federer-esque statement in his closely watched return to the Euroclay
2:05 PM ET Associated Press MADRID — Roger Federer wasted two match points in a 3-6, 7-6 (11), 6-4 loss to Dominic Thiem in the quarterfinals of the Madrid Open on Friday. The fifth-seeded Thiem outlasted Federer in the second-set tiebreaker and broke him twice in the third set to close out the match in