The first Grand Slam of the season, the Australian Open, begins in Melbourne tomorrow with Taiwanese interest in both the men’s and women’s singles competitions.
As far as the men are concerned, the nation’s hopes lie squarely on the shoulders of Taiwan’s only representative, Lu Yen-hsun.
The 27-year-old enjoyed his best-ever season last year, reaching a career-high ranking of 33 in November, largely on the back of a run to the quarter-finals at Wimbledon that included an epic five-set defeat of US star Andy Roddick.
Lu ended a memorable year as the top-ranked Asian player and even topped that by getting married last month.
He began this year with a couple of high-profile exhibition matches in Taipei and Kaohsiung against top 10-ranked Russian Mikhail Youzhny, before a disappointing 6-0, 6-3 defeat to Frenchman Gilles Simon at the Sydney International and, in an amazing coincidence, the Australian Open draw left Lu facing Simon again in the first round in Melbourne.
Ominously for the Taiwanese No. 1, the world No. 41 reached the quarter-finals on his last appearance in Melbourne in 2009, having missed last year’s tournament through injury.
Despite the Australian Open being played on his preferred hard-court surface, Lu has a mediocre 3-6 singles record in the tournament, his best performance being a run to the third round in 2009.
In the women’s singles, Chang Kai-chen received a boost before the tournament even started when she was granted a wild-card that earned her a place in the main draw after her world ranking of 117 proved insufficient to earn her an automatic spot. She faces Serbia’s Bojana Jovanovski in the first round.
Chan Yung-jan was not so lucky. Despite having ended last season ranked 10 places higher than Chang she has been forced to try to make the main draw through the qualifying tournament.
In Friday’s rain-delayed first qualifying round, Chan downed Stephanie Foretz Gacon of France 6-4, 6-3, before seeing off Erika Sema of Japan 6-3, 6-2 yesterday, wrapping up a comfortable victory against her 204th-ranked opponent in 72 minutes and sending down four aces in the process.
The Taiwanese, seeded third in the qualifying event, faces Russia’s Vesna Manasieva today for a place in the main draw.
Wet weather in Melbourne has badly affected the qualifying tournament, causing play to be truncated on Wednesday, washing out any play on Thursday and again delaying proceedings on Friday. Things could have been even worse as there was particularly heavy rain on Friday morning which suddenly gave way to blue skies and sunshine in the afternoon.
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