Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei (謝淑薇) and her partner, Peng Shaui (彭帥) of China, fought back from a set down to claim the Western & Southern Open women’s doubles title in Cincinnati, Ohio, on Sunday.
After falling behind 0-4 in the first set, Hsieh and Peng rallied for a 2-6, 6-3, 12-10 victory over sixth seeds Anna-Lena Groenefeld of Germany and Kveta Peschke of the Czech Republic.
It was the duo’s third title this year in their first tournament since they won the Wimbledon doubles title.
Photo: AFP
They dropped only one set on the way to the final, but they dropped the first set on Sunday in just 28 minutes.
“They started playing well in the first set and it put a lot of pressure on us,” Peng told the WTA Web site. “Also, it was our first time playing them together as a team, so we also didn’t know how to play them a little bit. We called our coach at the start of the second set and from there we just tried to fight, and we’re really happy we could come back and win the second set, and of course win the match in the end as well.”
Hsieh and Peng now have seven WTA doubles titles, one in 2008 (Bali), three in 2009 (Sydney, Rome and Beijing) and three this year (Rome, Wimbledon and Cincinnati), and they have never lost in a final.
It was Peng’s first tournament since winning Wimbledon.
“I had to go back to China to play the National Games there,” Peng said. “It’s every four years for us and it’s very important for my team, so I had a long week playing that and a lot of tough matches.”
Next up for the victorious duo is this week’s WTA tournament in New Haven, Connecticut, but they also have their sights set on the WTA Championships in Istanbul, Turkey, in October.
“We’re trying to get into Istanbul,” Hsieh told the WTA Web site. “We’ve never played Istanbul before, so we’re trying to schedule the tournaments better and trying to win a little bit more because we haven’t been playing a lot of tournaments. Now, including New Haven, we’ll have played nine tournaments together this year.”
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