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Victoria Azarenka of Belarus celebrates a point against Flavia Pennetta of Italy at the US Open in New York, yesterday.
NEW YORK: Belarussian Victoria Azarenka beat Italian Flavia Pennetta 6-4, 6-2 yesterday to reach her second consecutive US Open final.
The Australian Open champion heads into tomorrow’s women’s singles final having dropped just two sets in the year’s last Grand Slam, where she was a runner-up last year to Serena Williams.
Azarenka, the second seed at Flushing Meadows, will play the winner of the other semi-final matchup between top-seeded Williams and Chinese fifth seed Li Na.
Also, Max Mirnyi of Belarus won his third US Open mixed doubles crown, joining Czech Andrea Hlavackova to beat Mexican Santiago Gonzalez and American Abigail Spears 7-6 (7/5), 6-3 in the final.
The seventh-seeded European duo needed only 86 minutes to capture the crown over the unseeded North Americans for the $150,000 top prize at Arthur Ashe Stadium.
Meanwhile, A Spanish judge handed an eight-month jail sentence to John Tomic, father of Australian tennis player Bernard Tomic, for headbutting his son’s French training partner, a court said yesterday.
John Tomic was sentenced for the assault outside a Madrid hotel in May, in which he broke Thomas Drouet’s nose and knocked him out, the court said in a written judgement.
“I sentence the accused Ivica Tomic as the author of a crime of bodily harm... to a penalty of eight months’ prison,” wrote judge Jacobo Vigil Levi in a ruling, referring to the Bosnian-born defendant, 49, by his official name.
A court source said that Tomic could appeal to two higher courts before the sentence is made definitive.
He will not serve jail time, however, as the sentence is less than two years and he has no previous convictions in Spain, the source added. If the sentenced is confirmed, he will have to pay small legal costs.
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