Taiwanese doubles duo Chan Yung-jan (詹詠然) and Chuang Chia-jung (莊佳容) crashed out of the French Open with a quarter-final defeat by Spanish pair Annabel Medina Garrigues and Virginia Ruano Pascual on Tuesday.
The fourth-seeded Taiwanese lost a close three setter to the 10th seeded Spaniards in three hours, 11 minutes.
In the keenly contested first set, each duo broke serve three times and the set went into a tie-breaker
At 2-2, the Taiwanese won four straight points, pulling 6-2 ahead before clinching the set 7-4 on the tie breaker.
In the second set, Chan and Chuang broke serve in the ninth game to pull ahead go 5-4 up, just one game away from victory. They were then unable to hold serve and in the end Garrigues and Pascual took the set 7-5.
The third set was as hard-fought as the previous two. After losing two straight games at 3-3, Chan and Chuang then managed to win the next two putting to make it 5-5. After almost three hours, however, the exhausted Taiwanese pair lost the two final games and thus the set, 7-5.
Despite their defeat Chan and Chuang have been given the women’s doubles top seeding for the Beijing Olympics.
This was confirmed when Ukrainian sister team Alona and Kateryna Bondarenko lost their semi-final against Casey Dellacqua of Australia and Francesca Schiavone of Italy yesterday.
The Australian-Italian duo will play Medina Garrigues and Ruano Pascual in the final after the Spaniards beat top seeds Liezel Huber of the US and Cara Black of Zimbabwe 6-4, 7-6, yesterday.
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