There was better news for Taiwanese fans at the Australian Open following the defeats of Lu Yen-hsun and Chang Kai-chen on the opening two days, as Chan Yung-jan, Chuang Chia-jung and Hsieh Su-wei all won their first-round women’s doubles matches yesterday.
Chan teamed up with Agnieszka Radwanska of Poland to defeat Dominika Cibulkova of Slovakia and Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova of Russia 4-6, 6-2, 7-5, while Chuang and Hsieh enjoyed a straightforward 6-1, 6-2 victory over teenage Australian wild-card duo Jade Hopper and Monika Wejnert.
Chan and Radwanska had to dig deep in their nail-biting showdown, coming from a set down and then 1-4 down in the third to claim victory.
“We didn’t give up and tried to put pressure on them at the net,” Chan said after the match. “It was a very, very close match. Our opponents played very well, especially Cibulkova on the baseline, and we felt a lot of pressure.”
The victory was all the more impressive as it was the first time the No. 8 seeds had played together, Chan’s regular partner, Zheng Jie of China, having opted out of playing doubles following surgery.
“It’s not bad that we had a tough match in the first round. We’ll play better in the next round,” Chan said.
Cibulkova and Pavlyuchenkova shaded a very tight first set, but Chan and Radwanska were looking good after taking the second. However, the tide turned after Chan dropped her serve in the third game of the deciding set following a contentious line call and Radwanska followed suit after a hard-fought fifth game.
Although they immediately got a break back, Pavlyuchenkova served for the match at 5-4. A block return by Chan landed right on the line to leave the Russian and Slovakian pairing on 0-30 and then a disastrous double fault gave the Taiwanese-Polish duo three break points. On the first of them, Cibulkova sent a backhand volley long to make it 5-5.
The next game went to two deuces on Chan’s serve, before she held to go 6-5 up and in what proved to be the final game, Cibulkova netted a backhand return on the first match point to end the contest.
Earlier in the day, Chuang and Hsieh were altogether too good for their opponents, who looked so young it seemed like they might have skipped school to take to the court.
Chuang served impressively, sending down three aces, with the Taiwanese winning 76 percent of points on her first serve and 85 percent on her second serve. In contrast, the respective figures for Wejnert were 33 percent and 20 percent.
Chuang hit her ground-strokes with power, particularly on the backhand side, while Hsieh was consistent throughout, pulling off some impressive interceptions and volleys.
The contest started fairly evenly, but after a slight fright for the Taiwanese in the third game when they faced a break point on Hsieh’s serve, it was plain sailing from then on.
They seemed to be enjoying themselves, chatting and smiling between points, and Lu Yen-hsun briefly turned up at one point to check out the proceedings, sending a ripple of excitement through the Taiwanese contingent in the small crowd.
SINGLES MATCHES
AP, MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA
Defending champion Roger Federer survived a major scare yesterday, beating Gilles Simon 6-2, 6-3, 4-6, 4-6, 6-3 in the second round of the men’s singles.
For a while it seemed as if Simon, who had beaten Federer in their only two previous meetings, would send the Swiss star packing out of a Grand Slam before the third round for the first time since the French Open in 2003, but Federer, pumping his fist increasingly in celebration with each point in the final few games, broke Simon’s service in the sixth game of the deciding set to go up 4-2, held his service to go up 5-2, then held his serve two games later to clinch it on his fifth match point with an ace.
Earlier, Venus Williams was in the middle of a first-set tiebreaker when her mother yelled some encouragement from the players’ box at Rod Laver Arena.
Oracene Price’s urges to “fight” were clearly intended for her daughter, but they appeared to immediately fall on deaf ears and with good reason. On the last point of the tiebreaker she eventually lost, Venus hurt herself on a twisting backhand volley.
Writhing in pain and clutching near her stomach as she walked back to her chair, a WTA trainer was called and Williams took a medical timeout. A few minutes later, she returned with her upper right thigh taped and a whole new attitude.
She later said she injured her “psoas” muscle, which flexes the hip and spinal column.
“It was really tough, but I’m a long way from home and it’s such a long way I didn’t want to go back yet,” Williams said after surviving a 6-7 (6/8), 6-0, 6-4 second-round win over Czech Sandra Zahlavova. “You’ve got to be able to play under all kinds of circumstances — good, bad, strange, weird, all of the above. I had to just calm myself down. In the middle of a match like that, you can get a little hysterical.”
Elsewhere at Melbourne Park, Novak Djokovic, Andy Roddick, top-seeded woman Caroline Wozniacki, last year’s finalist Justine Henin and 2008 champion Maria Sharapova also advanced.
No. 3 Djokovic beat Ivan Dodig 7-5, 6-7 (10/12), 6-0, 6-2. Djokovic, who beat Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in the 2008 final for his only Grand Slam title, is in career-best form.
Djokovic will next play his Davis Cup teammate Viktor Troicki after the 29th-seeded player beat Frenchman Nicolas Mahut 6-4, 6-2, 1-6, 6-3.
Wozniacki advanced with a 6-1, 6-0 win over Vania King of the US in the Danish player’s first Grand Slam as world No. 1.
To get to the semis, Wozniacki might have to beat seven-time Grand Slam winner Henin, who continued her comeback from injury with a 6-1, 6-3 win over Elena Baltacha of Britain.
The pair could meet in the quarter-finals. Henin will have to get through a tough match against two-time Grand Slam winner Svetlana Kuznetsova just to get past the third round. The 23-seeded Kuznetsova beat Dutch qualifier Arantxa Rus 6-1, 6-4.
Bayer 04 Leverkusen go into today’s match at TSG 1899 Hoffenheim stung from their first league defeat in 16 months. Leverkusen were beaten 3-2 at home by RB Leipzig before the international break, the first loss since May last year for the reigning league and cup champions. While any defeat, particularly against a likely title rival, would have disappointed coach Xabi Alonso, the way in which it happened would be most concerning. Just as they did in the Supercup against VfB Stuttgart and in the league opener to Borussia Moenchengladbach, Leverkusen scored first, but were pegged back. However, while Leverkusen rallied late to
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