Latest news with #defendingChampion
Daily Mail
09-07-2025
- Sport
- Daily Mail
Defending champion MacIntyre not ready to give up his Genesis Scottish Open title just yet
Bob MacIntyre insists he can play without any pressure at the Genesis Scottish Open - and has warned his rivals he won't give up his title without a fight. MacIntyre will tee it up this morning as the defending champion at The Renaissance after a stunning victory 12 months ago in front of his home crowd. The 28-year-old Scot believes the win will give him a new sense of freedom in his home event on what is expected to be a week of glorious sunshine in East Lothian. MacIntyre, who will play alongside world No 1 Scottie Scheffler and Adam Scott in a marquee group for the opening two rounds, will be going all guns blazing to make it back-to-back victories. 'I want to keep this trophy every year until I stop playing,' he said. 'It's the Scottish Open, the flagship event for me, the biggest after the majors. I am coming here to win. It's a special tournament with an unbelievable field. 'I think the pressure is off in terms of how much I wanted to win this tournament. I have won it now. The expectation isn't necessarily from me, the expectation from the outside will be through the roof. 'I can't control that. I've just got to go out there and give it my best shot. Hopefully come the back nine on Sunday, things fall your way, perfect, like it did last year. 'I am not looking at The Open next week. I am looking to defend this title this week. I want to win every time I play in this event - and that doesn't change just because I won it last year. 'When that winning putt dropped last year, I've watched it over and over. When I struggle with my putting, I look at those moments and remember the highs.' MacIntyre will be sporting a new design on his golf bag this week, the blue-and-yellow tartan made famous by the late, great Doddie Weir. He has been a passionate supporter of the My Name'5 Doddie Foundation over the past few years, aiming to raise awareness for Motor Neurone Disease. He helped open a new grandstand at The Renaissance yesterday in memory of Scott Stewart, who sadly passed away in December last year after bravely battling against MND. Stewart, who attended the Scottish Open for many years as a fan and was guest starter for the pro-am last year, helped raise money and awareness about the chronic illness. 'It is a hellish disease,' said MacIntyre. 'I just want to try and help raise awareness about it if I can. Sadly Scott passed away last year. 'There's so many other people like Scott that have done a great job of raising awareness and raising money for the cause. I'm just a small part of that that's trying to keep it going. 'I've got a close family friend who has now also got it. We thought, well, what a place to do it. Just to try and - I'm going to try my best to raise awareness.'
Washington Post
05-07-2025
- Sport
- Washington Post
Tour de France: Philipsen wins first stage, Pogačar finishes safely
LILLE, France — Jasper Philipsen won the opening stage of the Tour de France in a sprint to the line while defending champion Tadej Pogačar finished safely on Saturday. Pogačar is looking to win the showcase race for a fourth time on the back of great form this season.
Yahoo
04-07-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Struff stress but Carlitos maintains hat-trick charge
Carlos Alcaraz has survived a "stressful" afternoon, coping with a barrage of booming serves from veteran German powerhhouse Jan-Lennard Struff to take his unbeaten streak to 21 matches and keep his Wimbledon hat-trick ambitions on course. The Spanish champion knew all about the danger of the 35-year-old Struff, having been knocked out of the 2021 French Open by him when he was an emerging star and then also getting stretched by the towering German over five sets at the following year's Wimbledon. And the same old problems emerged again on Friday when, after Alcaraz had eased through the first set, Struff, who blasted down 13 aces in all, responded brilliantly to clinch the crucial break for 5-3 before levelling the match. A fourth consecutive 4R at #Wimbledon awaits Carlos Alcaraz 👏The defending champion defeats Jan-Lennard Struff 6-1, 3-6, 6-3, 6-4 🇪🇸 — Wimbledon (@Wimbledon) July 4, 2025 But Alcaraz, who'd also had a serious workout from another veteran, Fabio Fognini, over five sets in the opening round, once again found another gear to prevail 6-1 3-6 6-3 6-4 in two hours and 25 minutes. "I knew it was going to be really difficult and I had to be focused on every shot," said the 22-year-old. "His game suits the grass, big serves, coming to the net, so I'm pleased with everything I did today. Proud to get the win in four sets. "To be honest I was suffering in every service game I did. Lots of break points down. It was stressful," added Alcaraz, who set up a last-16 date with 14th seed Andrey Rublev, who eased past veteran French leftie Adrian Mannarino 7-5 6-2 6-3. Taylor Fritz, who had already negotiated two marathon five-setters over three days to reach the third round, needed another three hours and 12 minutes to get past Spaniard Alejandro Davidovich Fokina. Yet though his workload has been massive and he's had issues with his knee, he reckons he's actually feeling stronger as each match goes by as he gets ready to face Australian Jordan Thompson, four-set victor over Luciano Darderi, in the last-16. It as the end of the road for Brazil's rising teenage star Joao Fonseca, who couldn't keep his legion of noisy fans happy after losing to the resurgent Chilean qualifier Nicolas Jarry, who secured a fourth-round meeting with Britain's Cameron Norrie after a 6-3 6-4 3-6 7-6 (7-4) victory on a raucous No.2 Court. The home fans, fed up after the exit of their big men's hope Jack Draper on Thursday, still have Cameron Norrie, their 2022 semi-finalist, to cheer after the last British man standing beat Italy's Mattia Bellucci 7-6 (7-5) 6-4 6-3.
The Guardian
03-07-2025
- Sport
- The Guardian
Carlos Alcaraz shakes off Tarvet from his back without inhibitions or regrets
There were negatives, of course. Shall we focus on the negatives? Shall we dwell on the frailties a little? The uncharacteristic errors, the double faults, an occasional scruffiness at the net, the frequent slumps in intensity? Shall we marvel at the fact that the lowest-ranked player in the tournament earned more break points (11) than one of the greatest players of his generation (10)? Shall we warn, in a tone of affected sternness, that the defending champion will have to raise his game on this evidence? Of course we shall, because this is Carlos Alcaraz, and because there is an entire cottage industry built around maintaining the idea that Alcaraz is in a state of crisis at all times, a state of crisis so acute that it is necessary to feign round-the-clock concern for him. We just want to see all that rich talent fulfilled. That's all it is. Sincerely and genuinely. And definitely not a weirdly prurient interest in his holidays to Ibiza, or whether him and Emma Raducanu are, you know. Just the talent. Thinking of the talent here. And of course the illicit pleasure and enduring appeal of Alcaraz is that he so readily indulges these desires. He emotes. He misses a lot. He pulls off spectacular acrobatic winners immediately after missing a lot. He lives without inhibitions or regrets. Alcaraz is essentially a magic-eye puzzle you can read in whatever way you want, and after the sweat-drenched psychodrama of Fabio Fognini on Monday night there were more danger signs in his 6-1, 6-4, 6-4 win over Britain's Oliver Tarvet; if you really, really wanted to see them. The more prosaic truth is that Alcaraz was playing himself as much as he was playing the world No 733 from St Albans. Tarvet is one of those classic British folk heroes the early rounds of Wimbledon always seem to throw up, complete with shaggy-dog backstory and tabloid headline-friendly name. And if Alcaraz was expecting an easy afternoon of Tarvet practice, he quickly discovered that it would be anything but easy shaking off this particular Tarvet from his back. Certainly Tarvet seemed to get an early read on the Alcaraz serve, used his speed and coverage to trade happily from the baseline, rode the early waves of noise from the home crowd. Some of his passes were sublime. Above all he looked untroubled, unfazed, hyper- confident, like a crypto-billionaire who had won a game against Carlos Alcaraz in a charity auction. 'Good serve,' he called out at one point as his opponent pinned him with a vicious delivery to the body. Alcaraz shot him a look as if to say: yeah. Obviously it's a good serve. I'm Carlos Alcaraz. Who are you again? But of course no read on Alcaraz's serve is ever going to rival the read he has on yours. And though both men kept swinging, while Tarvet created break points and saved others, the only real jeopardy here was of the confected variety. Tarvet probably played the best match of his life, and in the end it was like bringing a sword to a sword fight when your opponent has about six far superior swords. There was a sadistic relish to the way Alcaraz kept teasing him with the drop shot, occasionally missing, mostly succeeding. But of course the drop shot, such a staple of the Alcaraz game, is also a stick to beat him with. Missing it costs one point, exactly the same as putting a forehand an inch long. And yet some misses are clearly more moral than others. For his detractors Alcaraz's missed drop shots will always be taken in evidence against him, proof of his essential flimsiness. So, once again, we must deal with the principal charge. Alcaraz is inconsistent. It's true, because everyone says so, to the point where it has basically passed into objective fact. Like the objective fact that Alcaraz has a win percentage of 90% so far this year, has won five of his six finals, is slowly putting together one of the greatest seasons in the modern era. His grass-court record stands comparison with the all-timers. This is the sort of inconsistency all but one of his rivals would dream of. But of course this is a stylistic as much as it is an empirical judgment. It is true that there is a big gulf between his highest and lowest levels. That he occasionally loses to people like Botic van de Zandschulp. That towards the end of last season and for a small portion of this he has looked a little unmoored, a little rattled. And yet how much of this reaction stems from a desire to see crisis, to armchair-analyse, to draw a straight line from his personal choices to his tennis as a way of justifying our interest in his personal choices? In a way, Alcaraz's entire game serves as a kind of rejoinder to all this. This is, remember, still a player with just 34 tour games on grass, still adding levels and tones to his game, still learning how to master the mental side, still trying to work out exactly how famous he wants to be. In the meantime he's going to keep going for the lines, keep going to Ibiza, keep trying the drop shot, keep embracing the chaos, because that's the only way he knows. What if he misses, you scream. Fine. But what if he doesn't?
Washington Post
02-07-2025
- Sport
- Washington Post
Alcaraz gets past 733rd-ranked Tarvet in straight sets at Wimbledon
LONDON — For one game at least, it looked like Carlos Alcaraz could be in for another surprisingly tough encounter on Wimbledon's Centre Court. But after saving three break points in his opening service game against 733rd-ranked Ollie Tarvet , things got a bit more comfortable for the defending champion, who saw out a 6-1, 6-4, 6-4 second-round win over the unheralded collegiate player from Britain.
