{"id":5326,"date":"2013-01-09T22:06:54","date_gmt":"2013-01-09T12:36:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/sa\/?p=5326"},"modified":"2013-01-09T22:06:54","modified_gmt":"2013-01-09T12:36:54","slug":"2013-world-tennis-challenge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/sa\/news\/2013\/01\/09\/2013-world-tennis-challenge","title":{"rendered":"2013 World Tennis Challenge"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It was the match they\u2019d all come to see at the <strong>2013 World Tennis Challenge<\/strong>. The great champion, <strong>Martina Navratilova, <\/strong>and the serial slam winner 24 years her junior, <strong>Martina Hingis<\/strong>. And they didn\u2019t disappoint.<\/p>\n<p>It had been 39 years since Navratilova last played a singles match <strong>in Adelaide<\/strong> but still she looked at times as if she could beat someone half her age with ease. Martina Hingis though, was not to be intimidated by the crisp serve and volleying of Navratilova, the latter\u2019s familiar style undimmed by the years.<\/p>\n<p>Hingis was supreme with her volleys as she came to the net whenever the chance arose, her positioning and court movement as graceful and captivating as ever and from three games apiece, she strode away from the elder player to run out <strong>the easy winner 8-5<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>The crowd seemed thrilled with the occasion and Navratilova too appeared to enjoy herself, a rapturous and deserved ovation from the <strong>Memorial Drive<\/strong> crowd seeing the players off.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Henri Leconte<\/strong> was at his most entertaining as he defeated <strong>Mikael Pernfors<\/strong>, the Swede much improved on his previous night\u2019s performance, and even throwing in a winning backhand serve to the deceptively good Leconte, before <strong>going down 8-5<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Earlier,<strong> Spain\u2019s Nicolas Almagro<\/strong>, clad again in lemon attire, was in imperious form, generating huge speed on his speed on his serve and, especially, venomous forehand, to defeat the orange shirted <strong>Serbian<\/strong> <strong>Viktor Troicki, 6-3, 6-4<\/strong> in a high class encounter.<\/p>\n<p>Also first up and in the early evening sunshine, were <strong>Alexandr Dolgopolov<\/strong>, his spring-in-the-box serve failing to trouble the resolute and consistent Swiss, <strong>Stan Wawrinka, <\/strong>who withstood the Ukrainian\u2019s unorthodox game to win comfortably in two sets, 6\/2, 7\/6(4).<\/p>\n<p><strong>Mats Wilander<\/strong> won the final singles match of the evening, handling the big serves of local favourite <strong>Wayne Arthurs,<\/strong> with a mix of aggression and sound counter attacking play <strong>by 8-6,<\/strong> before paying homage to the <strong>World Tennis Challenge<\/strong> crowd which has the \u2018best party crowd atmosphere anywhere,\u2019 Mats said.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Mansour Bahrami and Nicolas Almagro <\/strong>defeated Henri Leconte and Alexandr Dolgopolov 6-5(7) in a most entertaining doubles conclusion to the evening.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Daily Update: Wednesday 9 January 2013<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5915,"featured_media":5327,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/sa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/sa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/sa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/sa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5915"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/sa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/sa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5326\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/sa\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/sa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/sa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/sa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}