Mauresmo lands herself a diamond day
Amelie Mauresmo won a $1.3 million diamond-studded racket trophy Sunday, beating Kim Clijsters 6-4, 7-6 (4) in the final of the Diamond Games tournament in Antwerp, Belgium.
The 8.8-pound gold racket trophy studded with 1,702 diamonds was for the first player to win three titles in any five-year span.
•Yaraslova Shvedova of Russia won her first WTA Tour title by stunning top-seeded defending champion Mara Santangelo of Italy 6-4, 6-4 at the Sony Ericsson International in Bangalore, India.
•Gilles Simon of France won his first career title, beating seventh-seeded Marcos Baghdatis 6-4, 7-6 (3) at the Open 13 in Marseille, France.
Simon broke the 2006 Australian Open runner-up in the fourth game of the second set to take a 3-1 lead and then went ahead 5-2.
Baghdatis rallied to 5-5 and forced a tiebreaker, but a series of unforced errors – notably a failed drop shot on match point – gave Simon the win.
•Wild card Guillermo Canas of Argentina upset top-seeded Juan Carlos Ferrero of Spain 7-6 (4), 6-2 in the Brazil Open final to win his first tournament since returning from a doping ban.
Canas didn’t lose any sets at Costa do Sauipe, Brazil, en route to his seventh career title.
Winter Sports
Fabris takes 1,500
Enrico Fabris of Italy edged Erben Wennemars of the Netherlands in the men’s 1,500 meter speedskating event, setting up a showdown at the final World Cup event in Erfurt, Germany, to decide the season title.
•Austria won the team competition title and finished with the most medals at the ski world championships in Are, Sweden.
The United States, without injured Bode Miller and other top skiers, finished last of the 11 teams.
•Yevgeni Popov led Russia to a World Cup win in the four-man bobsled in Winterberg, Germany.
Miscellany
Gophers could use Flip
It was easy to see who the star of the show was at the reunion of Minnesota’s 1982 men’s basketball Big Ten championship team.
Detroit Pistons coach Flip Saunders, an assistant coach on that team, received a rousing ovation and was serenaded with chants of “We want Flip! We want Flip!” when he was introduced with other members of the team during a timeout in the second half of Minnesota’s loss to Ohio State.
And it’s clear these fans wish Saunders would stay in Minnesota. The former Gophers point guard is believed to be on the top of athletic director Joel Maturi’s wish list of candidates to fill the basketball coaching position opened with the firing of Dan Monson earlier this season.
•Brett Favre will have ankle surgery in the next few weeks, and Green Bay Packers coach Mike McCarthy says the three-time MVP will have plenty of time to recover for minicamps.
•Juan “Pachin” Vicens, a Puerto Rican basketball star who played in two Olympics, died at his home in Ponce, Puerto Rico, days after his release from the hospital. He was 72.