Two-time defending champ Mardy Fish surrendered the Atlanta Open tennis crown when an injured left ankle forced him to retire from his second round match on Thursday. The second-seeded American was leading Luxembourg’s Gilles Muller 6-4, 3-2 when he called it quits at the hardcourt event. Fish, 30, stumbled while trying to return a drop shot and rolled his left ankle at the net, dropping to the ground and staying down for about a minute.
He got up and limped off to his sideline chair, sat down for a short break and returned to finish the fifth game but then chose to withdraw. Fish, who beat American compatriot John Isner in the last two Atlanta finals, recently underwent a procedure called cardiac catheter ablation, which deals with misfiring electrical pulses in the heart. Isner, meanwhile, advanced Thursday to the quarter-finals by defeating Ruben Bemelmans of Belgium 4-6, 6-3, 6-4. Aussie Matthew Ebden beat 32-year-old American James Blake 6-7 (6/8), 6-4, 6-4, and will play Muller on Friday. American Jack Sock also won his second round match by beating Steve Johnson 7-6 (7/5), 7-6 (7/5).
France’s Bartoli hopes for speedy recovery: Injured French star Marion Bartoli will need to recover quickly before she faces Christina McHale, who punched her ticket to the quarter-finals Thursday with a 4-6, 6-4, 6-4 win over Misaki Doi. The top-seeded Bartoli struggled in a second round win Wednesday over American Vania King as she needed treatment on her left hip during the match. The world number 10 is counting on solid hardcourt performances this summer in North American as she misses the London Olympics due to a longstanding feud with the national federation over her insistence that her father should be her only coach.
Fish stumbles out of Atlanta event with injury
