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| July 22, 2002 | Monday | Jamadi-ul-Awwal 11,1423 |
Youzhny captures maiden title with marathon victory
STUTTGART (Germany), July 21: Unseeded Mikhail Youzhny won his first ATP title with a marathon 6-3 3-6 3-6 6-4 6-4 victory over Argentina’s Guillermo Canas in the final of the Mercedes Cup on Sunday.
The 20-year-old Russian — who reached the last 16 at Wimbledon before losing to eventual champion Lleyton Hewitt — denied third seeded Canas the title for the second year running after the Argentine lost the 2001 final to Brazilian Gustavo Kuerten.
Youzhny, a semi-finalist in Casablanca and Munich in April, took the first set in 31 minutes after breaking Canas in game eight.
But the 24-year-old Argentine fought back, taking the both the second and third sets, which each lasted 37 minutes.
In the fourth set, however, Youzhny set the pace and Canas — who had comfortably beaten Czech top seed Jiri Novak in the semi-finals — seemed to be feeling the strain of their long baseline rallies.
Youzhny broke the serve of the Buenos Aires native in the third game to take the set in 37 minutes.
Canas started the fifth set better, breaking Youzhny in game four after the Russian had served two double faults.
But Youzhny broke back in the seventh and again in the ninth and took the set on his second match point with a powerful forehand after three hours and eight minutes of play.
Canas — a quarter-finalist at the French Open in June and winner of the Indian Open in January — expressed disappointment, but vowed to return next year to win the Mercedes car awarded to the winner.
BECKER IN LEGAL FIGHT
BERLIN: Germany’s former tennis champion Boris Becker has run into legal problems for the second time in two weeks after a former associate said he shorted their Internet company of promised funds, court sources told a German paper Sunday.
Paulus Neef, head of the struggling Internet consulting group Pixelpark, has filed a complaint against Becker for withholding 1.5 million euros (dollars) he had promised in writing to contribute for the launch of now bankrupt Sportgate, a sports news portal.
“We have received the formal complaint from Neef,” a spokesman for the Munich court, in southern Germany, told the paper Bild. He added that a date for a court hearing was not yet determined.
The judicial administrator of Sportgate Hartwig Albers has also filed a suit against Becker for the same reason.
Becker, 34, was the principal stockholder in Sportgate, which filed for insolvency in June 2001 after only 10 months of existence. Other shareholders included Bertelsmann subsidiary Pixelpark — itself struggling in the wake of the meltdown in the high-tech market — as well as Neef and the former head of RTL Germany, Helmut Thoma.
The Sportgate case follows on the heels of a German court’s announcement on July 13 that it was investigating Becker for tax fraud.—Reuters/AFP
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