Off Topic » tournament, a traditional warm-up event for Wimbledon

LONDON - Former champions Sam Querrey and Lleyton Hewitt claimed contrasting victories on Monday to advance to the second round of the Queens Club grass-court tournament, a traditional warm-up event for Wimbledon. Querrey, the 2010 winner at Queens, fired 31 aces and saved all four break points he faced but the American needed three tiebreakers to upset 14th-seeded Jeremy Chardy of France 6-7 (4), 7-6 (4), 7-6 (5). Australian veteran Hewitt went through 6-3, 6-3 against Spains Daniel Gimeno-Traver as he began his bid for a record fifth title. "I just felt pretty sharp out there," said Hewitt, who has played the most matches — 51 — in the tournaments history and won 41 of them. "Didnt take me long at all to get straight on the grass and felt comfortable, which is good." Australias Bernard Tomic faced defeat against American Tim Smyczek, dropping his serve to fall behind 5-4 in the third set before sweeping the final three games to win 6-4, 3-6, 7-5. "Very rarely youre going to get out of a match like that," said Tomic. "Im happy I won... realistically I should have lost that match." Among other winners was 13th-seeded Frenchman Nicolas Mahut, who defeated Marsel Ilhan 6-3, 6-4. Australian qualifier James Duckworth recovered from a disastrous opening set to beat Israels Dudi Sela 0-6, 7-6 (5), 6-4 and set up a second round clash with Tomas Berdych, and Paul-Henri Mathieu of France earned a meeting with Andy Murray by beating Slovenias Aljaz Bedene 7-6 (2), 6-4. The tournament has been at the Queens Club for more than a century. Andy Murray, who won the title last year before going on to become the first British man to win Wimbledon in 77 years, is seeded three and bidding to join Hewitt, Andy Roddick, John McEnroe and Boris Becker as a four-time winner. The tournament, led by top-seeded Stan Wawrinka and second-seeded Tomas Berdych, also includes four former champions in Murray, Hewitt, Querrey and Marin Cilic. 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LOUIS -- The indoor football stadium that the St. Louis Rams call home is running out of money as the NFLs team long-term future in the city remains murky. The publicly-funded Edward Jones Dome anticipates needing an extra $40 million to cover maintenance over the next 15 years, the St. Louis Post -Dispatch (bit.ly/1pGZkMd) reported Wednesday. The St. Louis Regional Convention and Sports Complex Authority, which owns the downtown dome, expects to exhaust its $16 million in savings in six years. The dome receives a total of $24 million annually from the city of St. Louis, St. Louis County and the state of Missouri for maintenance and to pay off construction debt , but those payments are scheduled to cease over the next decade. And the stadiums future remains in limbo as lease negotiations between St. Louis Rams owner Stan Kroenke and the stadium authority drag on. The Rams can break their 30-year lease after the upcoming season, which would be a decade early. Brian McMurtry, the authoritys executive director, is asking the three governments to not only continue providing at least $4 million for annual upkeep payments but to also consider sending the dome an additional $40 million in cash, or selling $40 million in new bonds. Hes also suggested putting several stadium-related items on the citys bond issue list for a public vote as early as this November. "Im going to tell you, they dont know how theyre going to do it," he said. "But they want to know what its going to take." Dome maintenance is almost entirely dependent on public dollars -- unlike Busch Stadium, a private ballpark funded largely by the St. Louis Cardinals, and the Scottrade Center, which is maintained by the ownners of the St.dddddddddddd Louis Blues and was built with $135 million from local companies. To help entice the Rams to stay, the St. Louis Convention & Visitors Commission, which manages the dome, in 2012 offered a $124 million improvement plan that included a bigger scoreboard and better club seating, with the Rams paying slightly more half those costs. The team countered with a far more ambitious proposal that called for a new roof with a sliding panel and a bevy of improvements that would keep the city convention centre in the dome closed for three years. The team didnt put a price tag on its request, but city officials estimated the upgrades would cost $700 million. "We cant come up with a long-term solution until we know what the relationship is going to be with the Rams," said Jim Shrewsbury, chairman of the stadium authoritys board. The stadium authority sold bonds in 1991 to build the $300 million dome, which opened in 1995. The sponsors agreed to a 30-year payment plan. The state would send the stadium authority $10 million a year toward debt repayment, plus $2 million for upkeep. The city and county each would pay half of that. University of Chicago economist Allen Sanderson said the conundrum facing St. Louis civic leaders is not uncommon when it comes to paying for aging public sports arenas. "Estimates of revenues tend to be overstated and costs played down, or at least pushed off to the future," he said. "Youve got this combination, on the city side, of public officials worried about the near future, not the long term, and these sports franchises that have an enormous amount of market power. And thats a bad combination for taxpayers." 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