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Wednesday June 28, 2017

PETRA KVITOVA pulled out of the Eastbourne tournament because of an abdominal injury Monday, a day after winning her fi rst title since her playing hand was injured in a knife attack.

Organizers of the grasscourt Aegon International confi rmed Kvitova’s withdrawal, a week before the start of Wimbledon. She won the Wimbledon title in 2011 and 2014.

Kvitova, 27, won the grasscourt Aegon Classic in Birmingham on Sunday by beating Ashleigh Barty 4-6, 6-3, 6-3 in the fi nal.

It was only her second tourna-ment since she was attacked at her home in December.

Kvitova had earlier moved up to 12th in the WTA rankings released Monday.

The 27-year-old Czech — who hit a career-high No. 2 ranking in October 2011 —will be bidding to add to her two Wimbledon titles starting July 3, provided her abdominal injury is not too serious.

Birmingham runner-up Australia’s Barty moved up 23 places to 54th in the rank-ings dominated by Angelique Kerber, ahead of Romanian Simona Halep and Czech Karo-lina Pliskova.

GUANGZHOU Evergrande man-ager Luiz Felipe Scolari believes midfi elder Paulinho’s proposed move to Barcelona is unlikely to happen as the Chinese Super League’s (CSL) transfer regula-tions make it too expensive to fi nd a replacement.

The Brazilian’s form for the six-time Chinese champions has been impressive since signing for the club two and a half years ago, and the 28-year-old admitted last week that the Catalan club had expressed an interest in taking him to Spain.

Scolari, however, dampened speculation Monday that his fellow Brazilian was set to head back to Europe due to the diffi -culty his club would have to fi ll the gap left should he leave.

“His release clause is 40 mil-lion euros (US$44.8 million) and none of the Chinese clubs will let their key players go because it would be diffi cult and expensive to fi nd a replacement due to the new rules,” the coach said.

Those new regulations see clubs charged a 100 percent levy by the Chinese Football Asso-ciation on transfer fees of more than 45 million yuan (US$6.58 million) for foreign players, with the additional fee redirected into youth development.

As a result, the summer trans-fer window has been unusually quiet, with no new foreign sign-ings joining the CSL sides after a glut of purchases in previous windows.

Chinese clubs have broken the Asian transfer record on three occasions over the last 18 months, with Jackson Marti-nez’s move to Guangzhou from Atletico Madrid setting a new benchmark in January 2016.

That was surpassed by Shang-hai SIPG in June 2016 with the signing of Hulk from Zenit St. Petersburg for 55 million euros, before the same club purchased Oscar from Chelsea for 60 mil-lion euros in January this year.

Former Tottenham Hotspur midfi elder Paulinho, meanwhile, admitted to Brazilian publication Globo Esporte that Barca had been in contact with his repre-sentatives. “There is an offer, but in life and also in my career I fi nd myself at a very happy stage now. When you are at such a stage, it’s diffi cult to make a decision.”

(SD-Agencies)

OKLAHOMA City Thunder star Russell Westbrook was voted MVP on Monday night after set-ting a record with 42 triple-dou-bles during his historic season. He led the league with 31.6 points and added 10.7 rebounds and 10.4 assists per game, join-ing Oscar Robertson as the only players to average a triple-double for the season and breaking Rob-ertson’s single-season record of 41 triple-doubles in 1961-62.

“I remember growing up just being home, playing the video games and stuff with my pops, and my mom sitting there and my brother and just talking about maybe one day I could be the MVP. Obviously I was joking at the time,” Westbrook said.

“But now to be standing here with this trophy next to me is a true blessing, man, and it’s an unbelievable feeling, something that I can never imagine.”

Westbrook’s victory ended the fi rst NBA Awards show, which included two wins apiece for the Houston Rockets and Milwaukee Bucks.

He received 69 fi rst-place votes and 888 points from a panel of 100 media members and a fan vote to easily beat Houston’s James Harden, who had 22 fi rst-place votes and 753 points. Kawhi Leonard was third with nine fi rst-place votes and 500 points.

Westbrook succeeded Stephen Curry, who had won the past two MVP awards. The point guard who plays with defi ance on the court got choked up during an acceptance speech in which he brought some team-

TOM BRADY has won an unprecedented four Super Bowl MVP awards. He’s a two-time NFL MVP. No other quarterback owns fi ve Super Bowl rings.

And now the New England Patriots star is the fi rst player to be twice voted No. 1 by his peers on NFL Network’s annual Top 100 list.

Brady was r e v e a l e d Monday atop The Top 100 Players of 2017, a list solely cal-culated from the votes of active players and seeking to project who will be the best performers of the upcoming season while honoring players’ past accomplishments.

The honor comes after a season that Brady began with a four-game suspension for his alleged role in the Defl ategate scandal but ended with him leading the Patriots back from a 25-point second-half defi cit in Super Bowl LI to become the fi rst team to win the game in overtime. He also topped the inaugural Top 100 list in 2011.

(SD-Agencies)

Oklahoma City Thunder guard Russell Westbrook poses for photos with his 2017 NBA most valuable player award during the 2017 NBA Awards at Basketball City in New York on Monday. SD-Agencies

Westbrook wins MVP Award

mates onto the stage with him.The Thunder went 33-9 when

he had a triple-double, riding Westbrook’s record run into the playoffs in their fi rst season after losing Kevin Durant to the Golden State Warriors.

“Oscar, guys like him, Magic Johnson, those guys, obviously I wasn’t able to see those guys play, but just to look back at his-tory and see the things that they did, it’s something that I looked up to as a kid,” Westbrook said.

“I never thought I would be able to say that I broke Oscar Robertson’s record, and

that’s just a true blessing.”Earlier, Milwaukee’s Malcolm

Brogdon became the fi rst player not picked in the fi rst round to win NBA Rookie of the Year in the common draft era, beating out Philadelphia’s Dario Saric and Joel Embiid.

Brogdon was the No. 36 overall selection out of Virginia. The common draft era began in 1966.

“I think it’s an example for guys that are told they are too short, they are not athletic enough, they are not real point guards, they are not real shoot-

ing guards,” Brogdon said. “I just think it’s an important message for people to see, and it can be done. It just takes a lot.”

Teammate Giannis Antetok-ounmpo won the Most Improved Player award.

Houston coach Mike D’Antoni won his second Coach of the Year award, and the Rockets’ Eric Gordon was Sixth Man of the Year after setting a record for most 3-pointers off the bench in his fi rst season as a reserve.

Gordon set the single-season record with 206 3-pointers by a reserve. (SD-Agencies)

Brady voted No. 1 on Top 100 listWimbledon fears as Kvitova injured

Meanwhile, after dealing with injuries and a chronic lack of solid results, Kerber confi rmed Monday she fi nally feels fi t again and keen to challenge at Eastbourne and Wimbledon.

“I’m feeling good already,” said Kerber, 29, top seed at the joint ATP-WTA event this week. She will play her fi rst match in the second round after a bye against Czech Kristyna Pliskova.

“I pulled out from Birmingham (last week) because I was not 100 percent and I was feeling a little bit my leg.

“I had a lot of treatments and

three or four days resting. Then I started practising again (in Mal-lorca). Now I’m feeling good. It’s nice to be playing again on the grass courts.”

Halep, losing to Roland Garros fi nalist Jelena Ostapenko, has her eyes set on seizing the No. 1 ranking. One slip from Kerber and Halep could move closer with little more than 100 rank-ings points separating them.

The woman’s form guide for the fi nal portion of the brief grass season is anyone’s guess.

Kerber said that has been the recent trend. “I think we saw it already in the last few weeks, few months. This is a challenge for everybody.

“But I have learned that I really can only focus on me and not think too much about all the other players and what they are doing. I will just do my things and my schedule; my prepara-tion, deal with my side of the court and focus on me.”

The German, who took the top spot from Serena Williams, knows she is under pressure and needs to turn in a good tourna-ment performance on the Eng-lish south coast at this week’s joint ATP-WTA tune-up.

(SD-Agencies)

Petra Kvitova

Paulinho

Paulinho unlikely to join Barca

Tom Brady