Tennis Sports

In the days leading up to the Rogers Cup in Toronto, Kim Clijsters doesn’t expect to spend much time parading around in fancy footwear.

Nope, sneakers or flats will have to do.

Clijsters is still rehabbing her second ankle injury of 2011 and with the Rogers Cup, which she won in 2005, and the U.S. Open just around the corner, the 28-year-old Belgian isn’t about to push her luck by picking the wrong kind of shoe.

“No high heels,” Clijsters said from New Jersey during a conference call Monday.

The tournament at Rexall Centre next month will mark Clijsters’ return to competitive tennis after seven weeks on the sideline. A season that started with so much promise when she won the first major of the year, the Australian Open, quickly turned into a never-ending series of trips to a physiotherapist.

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Nikolai Khabibulin was arrested in February 2010 and convicted in August.

Khabibulin, 38, who was found guilty last August on three charges of driving under the influence and speeding near his home in Paradise Valley. He will start serving the sentence within the next few days, said Khabibulin’s attorney, Mark DuBiel.

With NHL training camps set to open in September, Khabibulin ran the risk of being in court instead of on the ice in Edmonton. So he decided to withdraw the appeal.

“I readily accept the lawful sentence which has been imposed by the Scottsdale Municipal Court,” Khabibulin said in a statement.

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Fifth seed Feliciano Lopez was made to battle past wild-card Michael Lammer at the Swiss Open in Gstaad.

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CLEMSON, SC – Clemson junior Corbin Mills saw his winning streak end, but he still finished a solid fourth at the Palmetto Amateur in Aiken, SC on Saturday. Mills had a 71 in the final round to finish with a seven under par 273 score for the 72-hole event. Will McCurdy won the tournament in a playoff with Nicholas Reach after both players shot 10 under par in regulation.

Mills birdied three of his last five holes, but it was not enough. Earlier this summer he won the US Public Links and the Players Amateur. Still it was a strong showing as Mills makes a run at a US Walker Cup team spot. His next tournament will be the Porter Cup in New York next weekend followed by the Western Amateur in two weeks.

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The British No1, Elena Baltacha, booked her place in the second round of the Citi Open in Maryland with a straight-sets win over Yaroslava Shvedova of Kazakhstan.

The sixth seed claimed three breaks in the first set on her way to a 6-2, 7-6 (7-5) victory. In the next round she will play France’s Virginie Razzano, who was a 6-2, 6-2 winner over Japan’s Misaki Doi.

Heather Watson followed Baltacha into the second round as she beat Greece’s Eleni Daniilidou 6-4, 6-1. The British No3 raced into a 3-0 lead against a player who, at 103 in the world, is ranked one place higher than her, before being pegged back to 3-3.

But the Guernsey teenager battled hard to win the first set before racing through the second.

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