Rio de Janeiro: Andy Murray battled through a second successive three-setter to reach the Olympic Games semi-finals Friday while Monica Puig was one win away from delivering Puerto Rico a first ever gold medal. “This Olympics isn’t about me, it’s about Puerto Rico and I know how bad they want this”. Bellucci is trying to become the first Brazilian to medal in tennis. Puerto Rico’s previous eight Olympic medals have all been won by men, and never the gold. Angelique Kerber closes out the opening frame after twenty-nine minutes by taking three consecutive games over Konta.
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However, her flawless record in Rio ended when Puig grabbed the first set against a suddenly lacklustre looking German who required treatment on a back injury between sets.
“I was preparing for the Olympics from the beginning of the season”, Kvitova said. “I don’t know what possessed her – but she needs to carry it for the rest of her life”. “I’m wildly ecstatic. I can not believe how well she played”. “But I couldn’t. I was choking up the whole time”.
The 22-year-old unseeded Puig also upset 14th-seeded Russian Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova 6-3, 6-2 in the second round of this hard-court event, here at the Olympic Tennis Centre.
Williams lost in the first round of singles and women’s doubles in Rio. To reach the final, she knocked off Garbine Muguruza of Spain and Petra Kvitova, of the Czech Republic. Puig will come at her with aggression and heavy hitting, but Kerber’s strength is being able to run everything down which was frustrating Keys early in their semi-final.
Puig took out the No. 2-ranked Kerber with a relentless barrage of ground strokes and displayed a deft touch when required.
The players traded service breaks and blazing passing shots in the final set, but Murray showed steady nerves to win the tiebreak, closing out the match with a deftly placed overhead smash. Murray is trying to do what nobody has done before: successfully defend a singles gold medal. Puig is deeply aware of what her triumphs mean. “I tried everything. she played better in the end”.
The Puerto Rican is already guaranteed to make history as she’ll become the first female medallist from her country regardless of the result in the final.
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She recognized plenty of the words as fans belted them out. Young activists and artists protested in abundance after President Obama signed the PROMESA act, a piece of legislature requiring a board to oversee Puerto Rico’s finances. That island has given me so much love and support my whole career. Just putting myself in this position for my first Olympics is so big. After many months of political infighting, President Obama signed bipartisan legislation in late June that creates a financial control board to help restructure Puerto Rico’s debt. He punctuated a winning point late in the third set with a roar and a triple-fist-pump shuffle that ignited all the Spaniards in the crowd, and the many Brazilians who were rooting against the Argentinean del Potro. “It could be even better than the U.S. Open tournament”.
