Murray returns to China and wins 1st-round match at Zhuhai. Linette advances to Guangzhou semifinals

Returning to China for the first time in four years, Andy Murray won his first-round match at the Zhuhai Championships on Thursday, beating local wild card Mo Ye Cong 7-5, 6-3.
Murray, bidding for his fifth tour title in China and the first there since the Beijing Open in 2016, edged a tight first-set by breaking in the 12th game. The seventh-seeded Brit then overpowered his 23-year-old opponent in the second set to take the match in 1 hour and 42 minutes.
The 36-year-old Murray next plays 63rd-ranked Aslan Karatsev, who defeated Matteo Arnaldi 6-7 (5), 7-6 (5), 6-2.
Fifth-seeded Tomas Martin Etcheverry beat Australian Luke Saville 6-4, 6-4.
Other winners included Kimmer Coppejans, Cristian Garin and qualifiers Marc Polmans and Alex Bolt.
Top-seeded Karen Khachanov faces Australia's Bolt in the second round, while second-seeded Cameron Norrie plays Polmans on Friday.
At the Chengdu Open, American Marcos Giron defeated fifth-seeded Alexander Bublik 7-6 (6), 6-3, and Australian Jordan Thompson beat sixth-seeded compatriot Max Purcell 6-2, 7-6 (8).
Giron, ranked No. 64, will next play Frenchman Arthur Rinderknech, who beat Tu Li 7-6 (5), 7-6 (6), while Thompson faces Dusan Lajovic. The Serbian needed three sets to overcome Belgian wild card Zizou Bergs 6-4, 1-6, 6-3.
Juan Pablo Varillas eased past Chinese wild card Cui Jie 6-1, 6-3 and seventh-seeded Miomir Kecmanovic beat qualifier Benjamin Lock 6-2, 6-3.
Top-seeded players Alexander Zverev, Lorenzo Musetti, Grigor Dimitrov and Daniel Evans play their second-round matches on Friday after receiving a bye in the first round.
At the Guangzhou Open, unseeded Yulia Putintseva from Kazakhstan beat third-seeded Tatjana Maria 6-4, 6-7 (6), 6-0 in a near 3-hour match to reach her first semifinal of a WTA 250 event since Istanbul in April 2022.
Next up for Putintseva is top-seeded Magda Linette after the Pole advanced with a 7-5, 7-6 (6) win over fifth-seeded Rebeka Masarova of Spain.
Greet Minnen defeated fourth-seeded Lucia Bronzetti of Italy 6-7 (8), 6-4, 6-1. The seventh-seeded Belgian will play either Wang Xiyu or Viktoria Hruncakova, who play later Thursday, in the semifinals.
CTVNews.ca Top Stories

Monster storm in North Atlantic stretches cloud from Atlantic Canada to Portugal
A large low-pressure system centred about 750 kilometres to the northeast of Newfoundland is causing clouds to stretch all the way to Portugal.
'Trudeau can end it all': Conservative carbon tax filibuster stretches into second night
With no signs either side is ready to retreat, the marathon voting session in the House of Commons has stretched into its second day, after MPs stayed up all night rejecting Conservative attempts to defeat government spending plans over the Liberals' refusal to scrap the carbon tax.
Shohei Ohtani watch kicks into higher gear in Toronto as Blue Jays fans track private plane
Shohei Ohtani watch in Toronto has kicked into another gear.
Canadian alleges discrimination, sues federal government in effort to get grandchildren out of Gaza
A Palestinian-Canadian is suing the federal government in an effort to get his four grandchildren out of Gaza. Mohammed Nofal, 74, is alleging Global Affairs Canada and immigration officials created a discriminatory policy that denied his family help in evacuating a war zone in the days following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel.
'We're inside the patient, looking directly at the tumour': Gaming experience aids surgery
An Ontario teen is among the first patients in the country to have a rare type of cancer surgically removed by doctors who trained using a virtual reality system that allows them to 'walk' inside a patient's body.
'Pseudoscience': Alberta's health minister under fire for naturopathic medicine meeting
Alberta's health minister is facing pushback after taking a meeting focused on naturopathic medicine's role in the province's primary care.
2 Ontario men charged after allegedly producing recruitment videos for listed terrorist entity
Two men from Ontario have been arrested on charges of terrorism after allegedly producing recruitment videos for a listed terrorist organization and circulating far-right manifestos online, police say.
1 in 9 Canadian adults have had long-term symptoms from COVID infection: StatCan
About one in nine Canadian adults have had long-term symptoms from COVID-19 infection, according to a Statistics Canada report issued Friday.
Pompeii archaeologists uncover bakery that doubled as a prison
An ancient bakery operated by slaves has been discovered in the ruins of Pompeii, the Pompeii Archaeological Park said in a statement released Friday.