Taiwanese tennis player Chan Yung-jan received a rankings boost yesterday, offering some consolation after her defeat in the mixed doubles final at the Australian Open on Sunday.
The 21-year-old Chan is now ranked No. 112 in singles — up from her previous ranking of 119 — and No. 15 in doubles, up from No. 18, according to the latest rankings from the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA).
Chan is now the top-ranked female Taiwanese player in singles and doubles.
Photo: Yao Chieh-hsiu, Taipei Times
Chuang Chia-jung rose from No. 29 to No. 26 in the women’s doubles rankings following impressive runs in the women’s and mixed doubles at the Australian Open, while Hsieh Shu-wei rose from 46 to 41.
Chang Kai-chen, however, saw her women’s singles ranking fall from 117 to 119 following her first round exit in Melbourne.
Upon her return home from Australia yesterday, Chan said at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport that the experience of playing in the mixed doubles final had boosted her confidence.
She also dismissed media reports that her Australian partner, Paul Hanley, had not played to his normal standard.
Chan and Hanley lost to Katarina Srebotnik of Slovenia and Daniel Nestor of Canada in the final.
It was the third time Chan has ended up as a losing finalist in a Grand Slam event following defeats in the women’s doubles finals at the Australian and French Opens in 2007, when Chuang was her partner.
It will be only the second time in the last eight years that Chan has been able to spend the Lunar New Year holiday in Taiwan and she said she was looking forward to spending time with her family and doing some cooking.
“She cooks well, but we get lumbered with cleaning up after her,” her mother Liu Hsieh-chen joked.
SA TENNIS OPEN
BY TONY PHILLIPS
STAFF WRITER
Taiwan’s Lu Yen-hsun and Janko Tipsarevic of Serbia enjoyed a straightforward 6-3, 6-0 victory over French duo Adrian Mannarino and Florent Serra in the first round of the doubles at the SA Tennis Open in Johannesburg yesterday.
Lu and Tipsarevic, losing finalists at last year’s Chennai Open, did not face a break point as they raced to victory in only 49 minutes.
Lu has been drawn to play Milos Raonic of Canada in the first round of the singles at the US$500,000 ATP World Tour event.
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