No Early Exit as Agassi Wins in Switzerland

Top-ranked Andre Agassi powered his way into the second round of the $1-million Swiss Indoors tennis tournament Tuesday at Basel, Switzerland, with a 6-3, 6-4 victory over Jan Siemerink of the Netherlands.

Fighting to remain at the top of the ATP Tour rankings until season’s end, Agassi, the French and U.S. Open champion, used a powerful serve to dispatch Siemerink in 61 minutes.

Agassi, 29, seeking his fifth title of the year, was eliminated in the first round of the Grand Slam Cup at Munich last week.

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Jana Novotna of the Czech Republic, the 1998 Wimbledon champion, ended her 12-year career, losing her final match on the tour to Silvia Farina of Italy, 6-3, 6-4, at the Porsche Grand Prix at Filderstadt, Germany.

Novotna has dropped to No. 18, her lowest world ranking in 10 years. After losing in the third round of the U.S. Open, she said she would quit at the end of the year. But a first-round loss to Magdalena Maleeva in Luxembourg two weeks ago persuaded Novotna to play one more tournament.

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Top-seeded Marcelo Rios of Chile and No. 6 Michael Chang posted victories in the opening round of the Heineken Open at Beijing. Rios beat Italy’s Laurence Tieleman, 6-2, 6-1, and Chang defeated qualifier and American compatriot Brian Macphie, 7-5, 7-6 (7-5).

Motor Racing

Two-time Indianapolis 500 champion Al Unser Jr. reportedly will jump from CART to the Indy Racing League next season to rejoin car owner Rick Galles.

Autoweek magazine, without citing a source, reported that Unser and Galles have reached an agreement that would give the driver a chance to again win the race that helped make his family famous. His father won the race a record-tying four times, and his uncle, Bobby, had three victories at Indy.

Unser, second to Michael Andretti in career CART victories with 31, is in the worst slump of his career. He has not won since 1995, a span of 69 races.

The move to the IRL would give the circuit its biggest name. Two-time Indy 500 winner Arie Luyendyk retired after running the race this year.

Soccer

FIFA said it will start out-of-competition drug tests in Europe next spring, a major step in bringing its anti-doping policy closer in line with the International Olympic Committee.

As of next season, the world’s top soccer players will be subject to such testing by a FIFA-managed team of drug experts, wherever they play around the world, officials said.

“We want to improve our fight against doping by starting out-of-competition testing,” Sepp Blatter, president of the world soccer federation, said on the eve of a FIFA medical committee meeting in Brussels, Belgium. “We have to show we are clean.”

A court in Rio de Janeiro upheld Brazilian soccer star Edmundo’s conviction for vehicular homicide in connection with a 1995 traffic accident that killed three people.

Edmundo--his full name is Edmundo Alves de Souza Neto--was sentenced to 4 1/2 years in semi-open prison in March. In Brazil, those sentenced to such prisons must spend nights in jail but can leave to work during the day.

Also sentenced to semi-open prison, for six years, was the son of Brazilian legend Pele. Edson Cholbi do Nascimento, 29, was was convicted of murder in Sao Paolo for taking part in a street car race that resulted in the death of a passing motorcyclist.

Colleges

Senior point guard Erica Gomez underwent shoulder surgery Sept. 13 and will miss the nonconference portion of the UCLA women’s basketball schedule. She injured her left shoulder in July during a pickup game.

Gomez, who became UCLA’s all-time assists leader and was a first-team All-Pac-10 selection last season, is expected to be back for the Pac-10 season beginning in January.

The NCAA declared two Missouri basketball recruits eligible to play at the school after investigating whether it broke any rules over the players’ mothers accompanying them on a campus visit.

Athletic Director Mike Alden notified the NCAA last Friday that the university may have violated recruiting rules by allowing the mothers of Detroit standouts Arthur Johnson and Rickey Paulding to join their sons on a chartered plane to Columbia, Mo.

But a news release from the university late Tuesday night said they had been reinstated, “conditioned upon additional remuneration, by the parents, to further account for a portion of the charter flight costs.”

The NCAA revoked a basketball scholarship from Virginia’s men’s program for the 2000-01 season because of recruiting infractions in 1996. . . . Winthrop University of Rock Hill, S.C., suspended men’s soccer Coach Rich Posipanko for one game for pulling his team off the field with 26 minutes left in a scoreless game at Coastal Carolina last week after his team had received one red card and five yellow cards. . . . Former Penn State baseball coach Chuck Medlar died Sunday. He was 81. Medlar had a 312-141-6 record in 19 seasons beginning in 1963. . . . Virginia Tech Athletic Director Jim Weaver, 54, was given a five-year contract extension, the school announced.

Miscellany

Tom Watson won a closest-to-the-pin playoff with a tee shot that stopped 6 feet 2 inches from the hole, leading his team that also consisted of Dottie Pepper and Graham Marsh to victory in the Gillette Tour Challenge in Bermuda.

Two players were suspended for the rest of group play at the Rugby World Cup at Cardiff, Wales, a move organizers hope sends a clear signal that “gratuitous violence will not be tolerated.”

Colin Charvis of Wales and Roberto Grau of Argentina were cited after a fight during Wales’ 23-18 victory in Friday’s tournament opener.

Leontien van Moorsel of the Netherlands beat Anna Wilson of Australia by five seconds at the World Cycling Championships at Treviso, Italy, for her second consecutive elite women’s time trial title.