Taiwanese hopes in the Australian Open singles tournaments ended yesterday with Chang Kai-chen’s straight-sets defeat to Bojana Jovanovski 7-5, 6-1.
Taiwan’s sole representative in the women’s singles competition joined male compatriot Lu Yen-hsun as a first-round casualty, leaving Taiwanese players to hope for better luck in the doubles.
Like Lu the previous evening, the 20-year-old from Taoyuan started well, getting the better of some hard-fought opening exchanges between two players to open up a 5-1 lead.
Photo: AFP
Unfortunately, she also emulated her compatriot by fading as the contest went on, albeit in front of a smaller and more subdued crowd than that which had roared Lu on.
In stark contrast to Monday, when cheers by Gilles Simon’s fans were often drowned out by the large and colorful Taiwanese contingent rooting for Lu, support for the two players yesterday was more evenly split.
Chang served for the first set twice and had three set points in all, but failure to take advantage of chances in a baseline battle cost her dearly as former junior world No. 5 Jovanovski fought back to take the set 7-5.
Photo: AFP
The highly rated world No. 58 from Belgrade was on a roll and took the next four games before Chang managed to hold her serve, but it was too little, too late.
Jovanovski, who made a noise like a loud sneeze every time she hit the ball, won the next game to leave Chang serving to stay in the match.
The end wasn’t long in coming as a backhand-winner down the line on the second of three match-points earned the 19-year-old Serbian a 7-5, 6-1 victory.
Photo: AFP
Jovanovski’s increasing dominance as the contest progressed was highlighted by the fact that the second set lasted exactly half as long as the first — a mere 27 minutes.
Taiwanese fans can now turn their attention to the doubles -tournaments, with Chan Yung-jan, who missed out on a place in the singles competition when she lost to Russia’s Vesna Manasieva in the final qualifying round, partnering Agnieszka Radwanska of Poland in the women’s doubles today.
The No. 8 seeds face Slovakia’s Dominika Cibulkova and Russia’s Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova in the last match of the day on Court 19, where Taiwanese duo Hsieh Su-wei and Chuang Chia-jung will take on Australian pair Jade Hopper and Monika Wejnert in the first match of the day.
Lu and Rainer Schuttler of Germany are competing in the men’s doubles competition.
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