HALLE: Roger Federer is through to the final in Halle for the 10th time after beating giant Croatian Ivo Karlovic 7-6 (7/3), 7-6 (7/4), in Saturday’s semi-final. The Swiss, who has won the title seven times, will go on to face the winner of the second semi-final between Japan’s world No 5 Kei Nishikori and Italy’s Andreas Seppi. World No 2 and top seed Federer needed two tie-breaks to claim a 13th win in 14 meetings with Karlovic. The Croat, who stands 2.11m tall, had battered down 45 aces in his quarter-final victory against Czech Tomas Berdych on Friday but against Federer he managed a mere 21. Federer is chasing a 15th title on grass as he warms up for Wimbledon, which begins on June 29.

Lewis beats Nico

SPIELBERG: Lewis Hamilton will start the Austrian Grand Prix from pole position after again edging his Mercedes teammate Nico Rosberg in qualifying on Saturday. Hamilton left it late to clock a best lap of 1 minute, 8.455 seconds to beat Rosberg’s leading mark by 0.20 seconds. Ferrari driver Sebastian Vettel, who had been quickest in the second and third practice runs, was third ahead of Williams driver Felipe Massa. The session ended badly for Rosberg. As he went out on a last lap to try and beat Hamilton’s time, he veered too wide left in the final turn, slid off the track and up a bank, before halting in the gravel.

Ticket demands surge

NANTES: Ticket requests for next year’s European Championships in France have reached 3.7 million, organisers said Saturday. It means the ticket requests are already oversubscribed by almost four times, despite having only been open for a month. “Yesterday we were at 3.7 million requests for one million tickets, so it’s a much bigger demand than the offer,” said Jacques Lambert, president of the Euro 2016 tournament’s organising committee. Lambert said most requests had been for the cheapest tickets and that fans could increase their chances of getting tickets by applying for more expensive ones. Requests have come mostly from France (55 per cent) but also a lot from around Europe and 200 countries in total. The first phase of the ticket sale is open until July 10 and requests can only be made on the euro2016.fr website. In total 2.5 million tickets will be sold for the 51 matches in the new expanded 24-team tournament. While many of those tickets are reserved for sponsors, partners and the like, 1.8 million tickets in total will go to the general public. Each individual can apply for up to four tickets.

Liverpool sign Gomez

LONDON: Liverpool have signed Charlton Athletic and England under-19 international defender Joe Gomez on a long-term contract, the Premier League club said on Saturday. The 18-year-old, who made 24 appearances for Championship (second tier) side Charlton last season, has signed a five-year deal for a fee of 3.5 million pounds, according to British media reports. “The style of football and the top players here was somewhere that I wanted to go and get better and learn,” Gomez said. Gomez is Liverpool’s fourth signing of the close season following the arrivals of James Milner, striker Danny Ings and goalkeeper Adam Bogdan.