A day after defeating top-seeded Juan Martin del Potro at the ATP Tour’s Delray Beach (Fla.) Open, Piedmont native Mackenzie McDonald ran out of steam, falling to Radu Albot 3-6, 6-0, 6-0 in the semifinals Saturday night. In the process, Albot became the first Moldovan to reach an ATP final. “I think this is a great achievement,” Albot said. “This was my third semifinal and I was successful this time. I’ve been a lot of years the first player for my country to carry the flag everywhere in the world.” Albot will face England’s Daniel Evans in the final after Evans beat second-seeded John Isner 3-6, 6-2, 6-3. Isner held serve in all 31 service games he played this week until Evans broke him three times. “I just play every match as it comes,” Evans said. “I know it sounds very cliche.” It was the 40th tour-level match victory for Evans, who was suspended from the tour for a year in April 2017 after testing positive for cocaine. Miguel Morenatti / Associated Press “You have to stay resilient in the sport because it’s so up-and-down,” Evans said. “Obviously, my downfall was by my own wrongdoing.” • Belinda Bencic earned her first WTA title in 3½ years, beating Petra Kvitova 6-3, 1-6, 6-2 in the final of the Dubai Championships. Bencic beat second-ranked Simona Halep and two-time defending champion Elina Svitolina earlier in the tournament. ELSEWHERE No. 1 Cal wins Big Splash The No. 1 Cal men’s swimming and diving team set three pool records — including one by senior Andrew Seliskar in his final home dual meet — and the Bears rolled past No. 7 Stanford 172-122 at Spieker Aquatics Complex. Seliskar won the 200-yard butterfly in 1 minute, 41.89 seconds, breaking the pool mark of 1:43.91. Sean Grieshop set the pool record in the 400 individual medley (3:48.36) and the Bears’ 200 freestyle relay team of Pawel Sendyk, Ryan Hoffer, Seliskar and Michael Jensen set a new pool standard in 1:17.75. The Bears (6-0) won 11 individual events, with Seliskar the only multiple winner. He also took the 100 butterfly in 46.05. Stanford’s Jack Levant also won two individual events, the 200 freestyle (46.66) and 500 freestyle (4:18.53). Motor sports: Kyle Busch broke a tie with Ron Hornaday Jr. for the NASCAR Truck Series victory record at Atlanta Motor Speedway, winning No. 52 in a race delayed by rain with nine laps to go. Busch is set to make his 500th career NASCAR Cup start Sunday, and has 195 career wins across three series. • Christopher Bell led all but 20 laps while routing the field to win the NASCAR Xfinity Series race at Atlanta Motor Speedway. Skiing: At Crans-Montana, Switzerland, Olympic champion Sofia Goggia won the first World Cup downhill of the post-Lindsey Vonn era. Nicole Schmidhofer extended her lead in the downhill standings by placing third, 0.52 of a second behind Goggia. Overall World Cup leader Mikaela Shiffrin skipped the weekend. Soccer: Lionel Messi recorded his 50th hat trick for club and country in a 4-2 victory for Barcelona at Sevilla, helping Barcelona take a big step toward retaining the Spanish league title. Messi has a league-leading 25 goals and it was his 44th hat trick for Barcelona. • Kylian Mbappe scored twice to take his French league-leading tally to 22 goals as host Paris Saint-Germain beat Nimes 3-0 to move 17 points clear at the top. • Bayern Munich defeated Hertha Berlin 1-0 to tie Borussia Dortmund for the lead in the Bundesliga. Dortmund can restore its three-point lead with a home win over Bayer Leverkusen on Sunday.<doc-sep>"We're very pleased with how this week has gone," said Bob Bryan, who wins his first title since his return from hip surgery. "Expectations, I think for me, have been a little bit lower than they have in the past. We've just been trying to have fun and enjoy our time together, and it's actually resulted in some really good play."<doc-sep>Del Potro, who won the tournament in Florida in 2011, will next face big-serving American Reilly Opelka after last week’s New York Open champion saw off countryman Tennys Sandgren 6-4, 6-0 earlier in the day. Frances Tiafoe’s title defense wilted but Juan Martin del Potro looked fully recovered from his knee injury to cruise to a 6-3, 7-5 win over Yoshihito Nishioka in the first round of the Delray Beach Open on Tuesday. The third-seeded Tiafoe looked to have the match against qualifier Dan Evans in hand when he served up 6-5 and 30-love in the second set but was instead broken by Evans, whose aggressive net play frustrated Tiafoe in the final two sets as the Briton eventually prevailed 3-6, 7-6(1), 7-5. Late drama arose when Evans served for the match up 5-4 in the third set but nerves appeared to get to him and he was broken amid a flurry of unforced errors. But Tiafoe was broken in the next game and Evans made sure not to make the same mistake twice, winning his final service game at love to set up a second-round match against tournament wild card Lloyd Harris of South Africa. World number four del Potro, who missed last month’s Australian Open to nurse the kneecap he fractured at the Shanghai Masters, showed no ill effects in his first match of the year as he blasted 12 aces to see off baseline specialist Nishioka. The hard-hitting Argentine is looking to pick up where he left off before the injury, when his superb play made him a finalist at the US and China Opens and helped the 30-year-old reach a career-high ranking of world number three. Del Potro, who won the tournament in Florida in 2011, will next face big-serving American Reilly Opelka after last week’s New York Open champion saw off countryman Tennys Sandgren 6-4, 6-0 earlier in the day. Top American men’s player John Isner used his blistering serve to overwhelm Canadian Peter Polansky 6-3, 7-6(4) and advance to the second round. The second-seeded Isner fired 23 aces to Polansky’s four and won 87 percent of his first serve points as he cruised to victory. Next up for Isner is a second-round meeting with unseeded Slovak Lukas Lacko on Wednesday. Adrian Mannarino, Andreas Seppi, Paolo Lorenzi, Jordan Thompson, Steve Johnson, Mackenzie McDonald, Guillermo Garcia-Lopez and Radu Albot also won their first round matches on Tuesday at the ATP World Tour 250 event, which is played on outdoor hard courts.<doc-sep>
Bob Bryan and Mike Bryan have captured their first title since Bob returned from a hip surgery as they won their fifth Delray Beach Open title this Sunday. The Bryan Brothers defeated second-seeded Ken Skupski and Neal Skupski 7-6 (5) 6-4 in the Delray Beach final to win their first title since April 2018. The Skupski brothers got the first break of the match in the third game but their lead was short-lived as the Bryans broke back immediately in the following game and eventually claimed the opener after converting their third set point in the tie-break. The Bryan brothers broke the second seeds in the opening game of the second set and then held on to their serve to clinch a straight-set win and end the week in Delray Beach without a dropped set. The Bryans hit 12 aces, converted 2-of-4 of their break point chances and saved 3-of-4 of the break point opportunities they faced in an hour and 22 minutes of play. Elsewhere, France's Jeremy Chardy and Fabrice Martin have won it all in front of their home fans in Marseille as they beat No. 3 seeds Ben McLachlan and Matwe Middelkoop in the Open 13 Provence doubles final 6-3 6-7 (4) 10-3. The Frenchmen broke the third-seeded duo in the fourth game and then managed to hold to their serve for the rest of the set despite facing three break points in the following game. As no break points were seen, the second set went into a tie-break, where the French duo saved three consecutive set points but McLachlan and Middelkoop converted their fourth to force a decider. However, losing a tight second set didn't affect Chardy and Martin at all as they won the first eight points of the match tie-break and eventually sealed the win in an hour and 17 minutes of action. The Frenchmen fired 12 aces, won 85 percent of their first serve points, converted just 1-of-5 of their break point chances but also saved 3-of-3 of McLachlan and Middelkoop's break points opportunities on their way to winning their second team title. Chardy has now won back-to-back doubles titles as last week he made it all the way at the ABN AMRO World Tennis Tournament in Rotterdam alongside Henri Kontinen. Full results: