Roddick reaches London final

Second-seeded Andy Roddick and unseeded Nicolas Mahut advanced Saturday to the final of the Artois Championships in London.

Roddick beat Dmitry Tursunov, 6-4, 7-5, and Mahut reached his first final by serving 17 aces in a 6-3, 7-6 (4) victory over 14th-seeded Arnaud Clement.

“I thought I played a lot better today, pretty consistently,” Roddick said. “I was making returns, wasn’t making a lot of sloppy errors. So I was pleased.”

After waiting out a three-hour rain delay before the first semifinal, Roddick broke Tursunov to lead, 5-4, in the first set and then closed it out by winning the final 10 points.

Mahut double-faulted to face a break point while trailing Clement, 3-2, in the second set, but he saved the game and went on to close the match in the tiebreaker.

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Top-seeded Maria Sharapova reached the semifinals of the DFS Classic at Birmingham, England, by defeating two opponents -- Tamira Peszak and Elena Likhovtseva.

With rain postponing her third-round match against Peszak for two days, Sharapova will have to win four matches in two days if she is to win the title of the grass-court warmup for Wimbledon.

Sharapova defeated the 16-year-old Peszak, 6-3, 4-6, 6-2, and beat Likhovtseva in the quarterfinals, 6-2, 6-3.

Sharapova next will play either third-seeded Daniela Hantuchova or fifth-seeded Marion Bartoli, whose match was suspended by darkness after two sets. Hantuchova won the first set, 7-5, and Bartoli the second, 6-4.

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Eighth-seeded Marcos Baghdatis defeated Philipp Kohlschreiber, 7-6 (1), 6-4, to set up a title match with fourth-seeded Tomas Berdych in the Gerry Weber Open at Halle, Germany. Berdych advanced with a 7-6 (5), 6-4 victory over Jarkko Nieminen.

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Sixth-seeded Meghann Shaughnessy won the Barcelona Open in Spain by defeating Edina Gallovits, 6-3, 6-2. It was the season’s last clay-court tournament.

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Xavier Malisse and Jurgen Melzer are the latest players to pull out of Wimbledon, which begins June 25.

Malisse, who reached the semifinals in 2002, has a wrist injury that forced him to withdraw from the French Open last month. He was replaced in the singles draw by Lu Yen-hsun. Melzer withdrew for an unspecified reason. He was replaced by Michael Berrer.

Paradorn Srichaphan, 2004 French Open champion Anastasia Myskina, Jose Acasuso, Jie Zheng and Romina Oprandi had already pulled out.

BASEBALL

Watson extends streak to 42 and ties record

Center fielder Brandon Watson of the Columbus Clippers equaled a 95-year-old record in the team’s 5-4 victory over the Ottawa Lynx.

Watson’s one-out double in the fourth inning extended his minor league season-best hitting streak to 42 games and tied the International League mark set by Jack Lelivelt of the Rochester Hustlers in 1912.

Watson, 25, a Westchester High product who also singled in the sixth, is batting .365 (62 for 170) during the streak, which started May 1 against the Rochester Redwings. He has hit safely in 49 of his last 50 games.

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Major League Baseball suspended Philadelphia minor league pitcher Matt Childers for 50 games for violating the drug prevention and treatment program.

Childers is 4-1 with a 3.41 earned-run average in seven starts this season for Ottawa. The 28-year-old right-hander has appeared in 11 games in the majors, with Milwaukee in 2002 and Atlanta in 2005.

SOCCER

Beckham ready to play in Madrid’s title-decider

David Beckham has recovered from an ankle injury and will play in Real Madrid’s Spanish league title-deciding match today against Mallorca.

The 32-year-old midfielder trained with the team Saturday. Beckham re-injured his left ankle in Madrid’s 2-2 tie with Zaragoza last Saturday after spraining it while playing for England against Estonia in a European Championship qualifying match 10 days ago.

“I spoke with him after training and he said that he felt very good and would have no problems in playing,” Madrid Coach Fabio Capello said.

Madrid is unbeaten in the 11 games Beckham has played since Capello reinstated the former England captain. He benched him after he signed a five-year deal with the Galaxy in January.

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Freddy Adu of Real Salt Lake and Josmer Altidore of the New York Red Bulls will lead the U.S. team in the Under-20 World Cup that begins June 30 in Canada. The U.S. opens against South Korea on June 30 at Montreal.

Coach Thomas Rongen chose 21 players for the tournament, which runs through July 22. There are 14 professional players, the most for a U.S. Under-20 World Cup squad.

MISCELLANY

Amateur boxing to reform judging system

The International Amateur Boxing Assn. plans to scrap its electronic scoring system, agreeing to International Olympic Committee demands to make the judging of bouts harder to manipulate.

The old system was based on three of the five judges pressing a button within the same second to validate a blow. It will be replaced by one in which each judge counts blows separately, and the highest and lowest of the five judges’ scores will be discarded.

The proposal must be approved at a meeting of AIBA’s 195 federations during the 2007 world championships in Chicago in October. Once that occurs and the IOC agrees, the new system will be used at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

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Mary Akor of Gardena won the Grandma’s Marathon women’s title at Duluth, Minn., in 2:35:40. It was the native of Nigeria’s first Grandma’s win and made her the first U.S. citizen to win the women’s title since Mary Alico of Florida in 1996.

Wesly Ngetich won his second men’s title, finishing more than 1 1/2 minutes ahead of fellow Kenyan Joseph Kahugu. Ngetich finished in 2:15.55. Kahugu finished second in 2:17:29.