Sports News

Soderling's aces control match in Bangkok

Published: Sept. 23, 2008 at 4:02 PM
Order reprints
BANGKOK, Sept. 23 (UPI) -- Sixth-seeded Robin Soderling picked up a first-round win Tuesday at the $576,000 Thailand Open hard-court tennis tournament in Bangkok.

Soderling fired 14 aces in defeating Aisam-Ul-Haq Qureshi 6-2, 6-4 and the powerful serve kept him out of trouble throughout the match.

Seventh-seeded Marat Safin, however, was beaten in his second attempt at his 400th career ATP match win. Safin, who is 20-21 on the year, was upset 6-5, 7-6 (7-4) by Philipp Petzschner. Safin owns a career record of 399-242.

Robert Kendrick beat George Bastl 6-3, 7-6 (7-4) and Lukas Dlouhy got past Benjamin Becker, who was the runner-up in Bangkok last year, 6-5, 7-6 (7-4) in other first-round matches.

Also winning Tuesday were Nicolas Mahut, Simon Stadler and Teimuraz Gabashvili.

Stadler's victory earned him a shot at tournament No. 1 seed Novak Djokovic on Thursday.

The 2008 Thailand Open championship is worth $94,000 to the winner.


© 2008 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved.


Your Daily Horoscope (30 min)
The almanac (60 min)
Panetta: Congress not told of CIA program
Biden goes on the road to defend stimulus
The two-edged sword of online games
Rio Tinto employees face spy charges
Ghana prepared to greet Obama
fark
NY Times thinks their website users would pay five bucks per month. Listen, for the last time, no...
Fewer calories allow monkeys to live longer. Good thing you're not a monkey
"Resident found out it's not OK to shoot raccoons and gerbils...He told police that he and his neighbors...
Thousands homeless after China Quake. Quisp unavailable for comment
Ugly-ass okapi born at Denver Zoo. In fact, "okapi" means "ugly-ass" in Swahili
If you find a live grenade in your newly purchased vehicle, you probably shouldn't wait a month...