Kobayashi Ryokan pitched his best game since joining the Brother Elephants at the start of this season by going the distance in an impressive 6-0 shutout win over the Sinon Bulls at Douliou on Friday to record his first win in Taiwan.
The longtime minor league prospect of Japan’s Chunichi Dragons and the Lotte Marines who signed with the Elephant during the offseason for chance to star in Taiwan finally delivered what the Elephants had been looking for from him in a two-hit gem to silence his critics. He also gave an overworked Brother bullpen some much needed rest as they played their fourth game in five days.
A 6-0 lead was more than ample for Kobayashi as he shut down the Bulls offense by tossing a no-hit ball from the fifth inning on to pick up the impressive win.
Lions 13, T-Rex 4
Scoring early and often, the President Lions mowed over the dmedia T-Rex by racking up eleven runs over the first four innings en route to a 13-4 win in Tainan on Friday night.
The home cats wasted little time getting to T-Rex starter Michael Christopher with a first-inning run off the US right-hander before piling on the runs over the next three innings with two in the second, five in the third and three more in the fourth to blow the game wide open.
Lions outfielder Kuo Dai-chi ended his career-night by going 3-for-4 with four RBIs to lead a tenacious attack that ripped 13 hits off four different dmedia pitchers.
Last season’s Rookie-of-the-Year winner Pan Wu-hsiung of the Lions also exploded for three hits on the night with a pair of RBIs to come out of a recent slump that had kept his average to a .268.
Taiwanese world No. 1 women’s doubles star Hsieh Su-wei on Saturday overcame a first-set loss to win her opening match at the Madrid Open. Top seeds Hsieh and partner Elise Mertens of Belgium, with whom she last month won her fourth Indian Wells women’s doubles title, bounced back from a rocky first set to beat Asia Muhammad of the US and Aldila Sutjiadi of Indonesia 2-6, 6-4, 10-2. Hsieh and Mertens were next to face Heather Watson of the UK and Xu Yifan of China in the round of 16. Thirty-eight-year-old Hsieh last month reclaimed her world No. 1 spot after her Indian
EYES ON THE PRIZE: Armed with three solid men’s singles shuttlers and doubles Olympic champions, Taiwan aim to make their first Thomas Cup semi-final, Chou Tien-chen said Taiwanese badminton star Tai Tzu-ying yesterday quickly dispatched Malaysia’s Goh Jin Wei in straight sets, while her male counterpart Chou Tien-chen beat Germany’s Kai Schaefer, as Taiwan’s women’s and men’s teams won their Group B opening rounds of the TotalEnergies BWF Thomas and Uber Cup Finals in Chengdu, China. World No. 5 Tai beat Goh 21-19, 22-20 in a speedy 33 minutes, her fourth straight victory over the world No. 24 shuttler since they first faced each other in the quarter-finals of the 2018 Malaysia Open, where Tai went on to win the women’s singles title. Malaysia followed up Tai’s opening victory
Chen Yi-tung (陳奕通) secured a historic Olympic berth on Sunday by winning the senior men’s foil event at the 2024 Asia Oceania Zonal Olympic Fencing Qualifiers in United Arab Emirates. Chen defeated Samuel Elijah of Singapore 15-4 in the final in Dubai to secure the only wild card in the event, making him the first male Olympian fencer from Taiwan in 36 years and only the sixth Taiwanese fencer to ever qualify for the quadrennial event. The last appearance by a Taiwanese male fencer at the Olympics was in 1988, when Wang San-tsai (王三財) and Cheng Ming-hsiang (鄭明祥) competed in Seoul. The
Rafael Nadal on Tuesday lost in straight sets to 31st-ranked Jiri Lehecka in the fourth round at the Madrid Open, while Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei advanced to the semi-finals in the women’s doubles. Nadal said that he was feeling good about his progress following his latest injury layoff. Nadal called it a “positive week” in every way and said his body held up well. “I was able to play four matches, a couple of tough matches,” Nadal said. “So very positive, winning three matches, playing four matches at the high level of tennis. I enjoyed a lot playing at home. I leave here with