Tennis: Top seed put out by Wood

BRITAIN'S Clare Wood knocked out the top-seeded Sabine Hack, of Germany, from the Amway Women's Classic in Auckland, New Zealand, yesterday.

The unseeded Wood won the first-round match 6-2, 7-6 to open up the first half of the draw. However, her compatriot, Monique Javer, seeded sixth, was unable to follow her example, losing in three sets to the Croatian, Nadine Ercegovic.

Martina Navratilova made hard work of beating the teenage qualifier, Ai Sugiyama of Japan, in the first round of the Toray Pan Pacific Open in Yokohama.

The 36-year-old, playing in her first tournament since losing to Monica Seles in the New York Virginia Slims final in November, took 113 minutes to beat the enterprising 17-year-old Tokyo schoolgirl, 6-3, 3-6, 6-3.

Steffi Graf and Gabriela Sabatini, the top two seeds, play their first-round matches today.

Bjorn Borg still believes he is a force to be reckoned with after coming close to victory in the first round of the Volvo ATP tournament in San Francisco. Borg lost 6-4, 6-7, 6-4 to the third-seeded Brazilian, Jaime Oncins, but he did manage to win his first set in an ATP tour match since 1983.

Since making his comeback to the professional circuit last year, Borg, 36, has lost all eight of his tournament matches, but he said: 'I know now that I can play decent tennis in a tournament.'

The top seed, Andre Agassi, beat his fellow-American, Jonathan Stark, 6-2, 7-6 in his first match of the year.

Henri Leconte, of France, made a winning return after a two- and-a-half-month absence to nurse a heel injury, by beating Christo Van Rensburg, of South Africa, in straight sets in the first round of the ATP tournament in Marseilles.