TENNIS
Andrey Rublev grew so frustrated during a 7-5, 6-2 loss to Carlos Alcaraz at the ATP Finals on Wednesday that he repeatedly hit himself with his racket — so hard that he bloodied his left knee, at Turin, Italy.
Rublev had already slammed his racket to the ground during the opening game of the second set. Then when he missed a shot to hand Alcaraz a break, he started beating himself as he walked to his chair and then used a towel to wipe the blood off.
Blood continued to trickle down Rublev’s leg as he played on and he eventually called a trainer for treatment.
“It’s OK,” Rublev said of his knee. “I get disappointed and couldn’t manage.”
The second-ranked Alcaraz, a 20-year-old Spaniard who is already a two-time Grand Slam champion, ended an uncharacteristic three-match losing streak following defeats to Grigor Dimitrov in Shanghai, Roman Safiullin in Paris and Alexander Zverev in his debut match in Turin.
MEDIA
OBIT: Terry R. Taylor, who in two trailblazing decades as the first female sports editor of The Associated Press transformed the news agency’s emphasis into multilayered coverage of rigorous reporting, entertaining enterprise and edgy analysis, has died. She was 71.
Taylor died Tuesday at her home in Paoli, Pennsylvania, according to her husband, Tony Rentschler. She was diagnosed in 2013 with breast cancer that metastasized three years later. She stopped chemotherapy treatment last December when the side effects became intolerable, he said.
Taylor ran the AP sports department from 1992 until 2013 and believed she was on duty close to 24 hours a day. She arrived in the office around 10 a.m. most weekdays, usually staying until 7 or 8 p.m. and then remained constantly on the phone until West Coast night games ended — or even all night when the America’s Cup sailing took place in Australia. She led the AP’s coverage of 14 Olympics.
SOCCER
NWSL: Defensive midfielder Alex Loera has become the first player for Bay FC, an expansion team set to begin play next season in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Loera, who played at Santa Clara, was acquired in a trade with the Kansas City Current in exchange for $175,000 in allocation money and protection from Bay FC in the 2024 expansion draft.
Loera was captain of the Broncos when they won an NCAA championship in 2020. She was picked by the Current in 2021 but deferred for her extra year of eligibility at Santa Clara.
U.S. MEN: Atlanta defender Miles Robinson is the only Major League Soccer player on the U.S. roster for Thursday night’s match against Trinidad and Tobago, the first of two games in a five-day span that will determine a berth in next year’s Copa América and the CONCACAF Nations League semifinals.
Robinson and New England defender DeJuan Jones were the only MLS players on the October roster as Gregg Berhalter relies heavily on a Europe-based squad in the start of his second term as American coach.
Christian Pulisic, Tim Weah and captain Tyler Adams will miss the total-goals series because of injuries.
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