Off the wire

TENNIS Petkovic wins Family Circle

Andrea Petkovic ended a surprising week at the Family Circle Cup by winning her first WTA tournament in three years, outlasting Jana Cepelova for a 7-5, 6-2 victory Sunday in Charleston, S.C. Petkovic was once ranked ninth in the world before several injuries slowed her progress and cost her much of the 2012 season. She entered this tournament seeded 14th, ranked 40th in the world and with few expectations about her first clay-court event of the season. Instead, Petkovic’s powerful forehand and grind-it-out mindset helped her oust three consecutive top 10 seeds in No. 4 Sabine Lisicki, No. 9 Lucie Safarova and No. 6 Eugenie Bouchard on the way to the finals. The 26-year-old German used that same formula against Cepelova, a rising 20-year-old from Slovakia competing in her first WTA final. Cepelova led 5-4 and was a point away from capturing the first set. But Petkovic rallied to win that game and started a run of eight in a row to take control. Petkovic’s victory closed a week of surprises at the Family Circle Tennis Center. Only one of the tournament’s top 10 seeds made it through to the final four and it was the first time a WTA tournament included three semifinalists 20 years old or younger since Amelia Island in 2008. Cepelova had a stunning run of her own, topping world No. 1 Serena Williams on Tuesday night to set the stage for plenty more unexpected results. Cepelova became the Family Circle Cup’s first unseeded finalist since Elena Vesnina in 2011.

Roger Federer moved closer to adding one of the few trophies still missing from his cabinet by putting Switzerland into the Davis Cup semifinals on Sunday, while Italy and France also swept their reverse singles matches to complete come-from-behind victories. Federer won the decisive singles match to give Switzerland a 3-2 victory over Kazakhstan and a spot in the semifinals for the first time in 11 years. Federer cruised to a 7-6 (0), 6-2, 6-3 victory over 64thranked Andrey Golubev, after teammate Stanislas Wawrinka had beaten Mikhail Kukushkin 6-7 (4), 6-4, 6-4, 6-4 to level the series. Italy ousted Britain to reach its first semifinal in 16 years after Fabio Fognini pulled off a surprise 6-3, 6-3, 6-4 victory over two-time Grand Slam champion Andy Murray before Andreas Seppi defeated James Ward 6-4, 6-3, 6-4 in the decisive match. France had entered its quarterfinal against injury-hit Germany as a big favorite but had to erase a 2-0 deficit from the opening day to advance. Jo-Wilfried Tsonga cruised past Tobias Kamke 6-3, 6-2, 6-4 to help France go 2-2 before Gael Monfils secured the winning point by defeating Peter Gojowczyk 6-1, 7-6 (0), 6-2.

BASKETBALL Phillips hired at Ohio

Saul Phillips, who guided North Dakota State to an upset of fifth-seeded Oklahoma in the NCAA Tournament and 26 victories this season, was hired Sunday as Ohio University’s basketball coach. Phillips succeeds Jim Christian, who left after two years to coach Boston College. Christian was 49-22 at Ohio. Phillips was 134-84 in seven seasons at North Dakota State. He now joins a school that went 25-12 this season and made it to theCollegeInsider.com Tournament quarterfinals. Phillips was an assistant at North Dakota State for three seasons before becoming head coach. Before that, Phillips was the director of basketball operations for three years at Wisconsin under Bo Ryan. Phillips played at Wisconsin-Platteville under Ryan and in 1995 captained the Pioneers’ undefeated national championship team.

MOTOR SPORTS

Hamilton holds off Rosberg

Lewis Hamilton beat Mercedes teammate Nico Rosberg after an intense race-long duel to take victory at the BahrainGrand Prix on Sunday. The two Mercedes were predictably in a different league to their rivals and recorded their second one-two finish in eight days after victory last weekend in Malaysia. With no team orders, the two were allowed to race for the lead and while Rosberg got his nose ahead occasionally, he finished one second behind the Briton. Force India’s Sergio Perez was third and his teammate Nico Hulkenberg fifth, separated by Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo. Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel finished sixth, ahead of Williams drivers Felipe Massa and Valtteri Bottas, with the Ferraris of Fernando Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen filling the final two points positions in ninth and 10th. The race was closely fought up and down the field throughout, providing a boost for the sport after a tepid opening two races of the season, and the need for the safety car late on set up an 11-lap shootout. Hamilton was ahead but on the harder of the two tires while Rosberg was on the softer rubber. The drivers were cautioned by the garage to ensure they both made it to the finish. Twice Rosberg was able to pull off passing moves at the end of the main straight, but both times Hamilton was able to get better drive out of the ensuing corners and narrowly stayed ahead in some enthralling wheel-to-wheel racing.

COLLEGE ATHLETICS Emmert: Unionization “grossly inappropriate”

The NCAA president called an effort to unionize players a “grossly inappropriate” way to solve problems in college sports while insisting the association has plans to change the school-athlete relationship.

Mark Emmert said Sunday that the NCAA wants to allow the big conferences with moneymaking teams to write their own rules, and those changes could solve many athletes’ complaints more effectively than unionization.

“To be perfectly frank, the notion of using a union-employee model to address the challenges that exist in intercollegiate athletics is something that strikes most people as a grossly inappropriate solution to the problems,” Emmert said at his annual news conference, held the day before college basketball’s national championship.

He said it would “throw away the entire collegiate model for athletics.”

The NCAA has spent the last three years writing up plans to change its governance structure to allow the five biggest conferences to have different rules from hundreds of smaller schools. Because smaller schools have fought against costly changes such as paying athletes stipends, the independence of the big schools could break a logjam.

Although the issues have been simmering for years, they have drawn attention in recent weeks with a lawsuit filed by former athletes about to go to trial and a National Labor Relations Board director’s ruling that Northwestern football players should be able to form a union.

If the NCAA loses the unionization fight or the lawsuit, filed by former UCLA basketball player Ed O’Bannon, it could drastically alter the relationship between NCAA schools and 460,000 college athletes.

But, Emmert said, nothing the NCAA might do in coming months will be a direct response to either of those legal cases: “Those are conversations that have been going on for several years now,” he said.

Sports, Pages 18 on 04/07/2014

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