TENNIS ROUNDUP : Fernandez Stays Cool for Victory

Mary Joe Fernandez beat U.S. Olympic doubles partner Zina Garrison in straight sets Sunday to win the Virginia Slims Hall of Fame Invitational at Newport, R.I.

The victory in the exhibition tournament was especially satisfying to Fernandez, hospitalized for heat exhaustion last year after losing in three sets to Rosalyn Fairbank-Nideffer.

“The weather was a lot easier,” Fernandez said after beating Garrison, 6-4, 6-4. “Always when you have a bad experience somewhere you’re a little hesitant.”

Fernandez is ranked seventh in the world, Garrison 14th.

Defending champion Bryan Shelton beat Alex Antonitsch, 6-4, 6-4, in the men’s final to become the tournament’s first repeat champion since its inception in 1976. Shelton, 26, won $25,000.

“I was able to work him on my serve more than he was able to work me,” said the sixth-seeded Shelton, who had 11 aces and was successful on 63% of his first serves.

Antonitsch didn’t make it easy for Shelton to put him away, forcing five break points and avoiding one match point in an 18-point final game.

Defending champion Magnus Gustafsson won his first ATP tournament of the year by outlasting unseeded Thomas Carbonell, 5-7, 7-5, 6-4, in the final of the $260,000 Swedish Open at Bastad.

Gustafsson earned $33,800 for the victory.

Gustafsson, 25, will be one of Sweden’s three singles players this month in Barcelona, where the surface also is clay.

Top-seeded Conchita Martinez beat Manuela Maleeva-Fragniere, 6-0, 3-6, 6-2, in the final of the $150,000 Austrian Open clay-court tournament at Kitzbuhel.

It marked the second consecutive year that Martinez defeated Maleeva-Fragniere in the championship match.

Martinez, ranked eighth in the world, needed only 25 minutes to blast her way through the first set.