Federer cruises into quarters

Oeiras: Roger Federer overpowered Victor Hanescu 6-3, 6-2 on Thursday at the clay-court Estoril Open to advance to the quarter finals. The top-ranked Swiss gave a more assured performance than in the first round when he dropped the opening set. Playing in occasional light drizzle, Federer conceded just 10 points in his service games to win in an hour.

In Charleston, USA, top seed and holder Jelena Jankovic weathered a tight first set before crushing American qualifier Alexandra Stevenson 7-5, 6-0 in the Family Circle Cup second round on Wednesday. Second-seeded Russian Maria Sharapova also cruised into the third round, brushing aside American Bethanie Mattek 6-0, 6-0 in an evening match.

Indian challenge ends

New Delhi: Indian challenge at the Asian Badminton Championships came to an end at Johor Bahru in Malaysia on Thursday. Rupesh Kumar and Sanave Thomas had the unenviable task of facing the fourth seeded Indonesian pair of Alvent Yulianto Chandra and Luluk Hadiyanto in the first round and went down 7-21, 21-23 in 29 minutes. Akshay Devalkar and V. Diju made it to the second round but lost 16-21, 14-21 to the eight-seeded Japanese duo of Keita Masuda and Tadashi Ohtsuka in half an hour.

In women’s doubles, Jwala Gutta and Shruti Kurian ran into top seeds Wei Yang and Jiewen Zhang in Round II and were outclassed 10-21, 7-21 in 20 minutes.

Power to referees

Regensdorf (Switzerland): Referees at Euro 2008 will come down hard on players who use excessive force or show dissent if they follow instructions they were given on Thursday. The 12 referees who will officiate at the June tournament in Austria and Switzerland were handed a six-point list of instructions at the end of a four-day workshop at their Euro 2008 base near Zurich.

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