Favorites India and second seeds Taiwan will meet in the Asian Hopman Cup final after easy victories in their last league outings yesterday.
India and Taiwan scored 3-0 wins over Japan and Thailand, respectively, to top their three-team groups to gain places in today's final.
The winner of the inaugural tournament will get a direct entry for the main Hopman Cup to be played in Australia next January.
In group B, Taiwan's Hwang I-hsuan, ranked 316 in the world drubbed her opponent Nudnida Lauangnam, who is ranked five places lower, 6-2, 6-1. Ti Chen ranked 310 won the men's singles 6-1, 6-4 against Weerapat Doakmaiklee ranked more than 500 places lower.
The Taiwanese pair, who scored an easy 3-0 win over the Philippines on Thursday, enjoyed a walk-over in the mixed doubles.
India scored an expected win over Japan in group A as Sania Mirza and Rohan Bopanna wrapped up their matches in straights sets and then ensured a clean slate by winning the mixed doubles.
Mirza, the highest-ranked player among both men and women in the championship at 67, scored a 7-5, 6-2 win over 245th-ranked Tomoko Yonemura in 75 minutes.
"We have to watch out in the final tomorrow," said Mirza. "[Taiwan] will be tough and we can't take things easy."
Bopanna, ranked 259 in the world, clinched the decisive lead for India with a 7-6 (7-2), 6-2 win over 488th-ranked Yuichi Sugita.
A hard-fought last game of the match saw 10 deuces but Bopanna managed his second service break of the second set to ensure the match did not stretch beyond 77 minutes.
"I got breaks when I needed them and it was tough for him to break my serve," said Bopanna, 26, a last-minute replacement for Leander Paes in the Indian team.
Mirza and Bopanna won the mixed doubles 6-0, 6-1 against the Japanese pair, who had lost 2-1 to China on Friday.
China, who had lost 3-0 to India on the opening day, put up an inconsistent display but still overcame an unimpressive Japan under lights in the second tie of group A.
In group B on Friday, Thailand beat the Philippines 2-1.
Laungnam scored an impressive 6-4, 6-4 win over Czarina Arevalo and Doakmaiklee overcame Patrick Tierro 6-7 (4-7), 6-3, 7-5 in the men's singles to ensure a decisive lead.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier