San Jose Open: Third seeded Milos Raonic successfully defended his San Jose Open crown by routing Denis Istomin 7-6, 6-2 for his third career title on Sunday. The 21-year-old Canadian dominated unseeded Istomin with his serve, hammering seven aces and winning 90 per cent of his first serve points in the 79-minute match. The victory earned Raonic $95,000 in prize money and made him the ATP Tour’s first two-time winner of 2012.
Golf: Phil Mickelson is back into the world’s top 10 after just missing out on a second successive victory on Sunday. A week after winning at Pebble Beach, Mickelson sank a 26-foot birdie putt on the final green to tie fellow American Bill Haas in the Northern Trust Open at Riviera, LA. Keegan Bradley followed him in from 13 feet to make it a three-way play-off, but Haas grabbed the title with a 45-foot birdie putt on the second extra hole.
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Tennis: Petra Kvitova (picture) has pulled out of the Dubai WTA tournament because of illness. This is the second event in a row that the 21-year-old will miss after withdrawing from last week’s Qatar Classic because of an achilles tendon injury. A hectic January saw Kvitova win the Hopman Cup in Perth, make the semi-finals in Sydney and the Australian Open before helping the Czech Republic into the semi-finals of the Federation Cup World Group.
Basketball: NBA star Jeremy Lin made a public plea for reporters in Taiwan to respect the privacy of his family members there. Lin’s fairy-tale run, and the media storm that has accompanied it, has had an effect on those in his ancestral homelands. “One special request I have is for the media in Taiwan to kind of give them their space because they can’t go to work without being bombarded and people following them,” said Lin.
Cricket: Ricky Ponting’s one-day international career appeared over after he was dropped from Australia’s team yesterday for the tri one-day series against India and Sri Lanka. Chief selector John Inverarity said Ponting, the second all-time leading runscorer in ODIs, was axed because of his poor form. Ponting, 37, said earlier that he wanted to battle through his current slump after scoring just 18 runs in five knocks in the tri-series.