It was a mixed day for Taiwan’s Chang Kai-chen at the Guangzhou Open in China yesterday.
Chang came up against Luksika Kumkhum of Thailand in the final round of qualifying for the singles tournament yesterday morning on Court 1 and was knocked out, with the Thai winning 6-2, 4-6, 6-0 to advance to the first round.
Chang returned on Court 2 in the afternoon with her doubles partner Shuko Aoyama of Japan to advance to the second round by beating Russians Nina Bratchikova and Alla Kudryavtseva 6-1, 6-7 (5/7), 10-1.
The Chan sisters, Hao-ching and Yung-jan, the No. 2 seeds, also made it a mixed day for Taiwanese players when they defeated Taiwan’s Chan Chin-wei and Sun Sheng-nan of China 7-6 (7/4), 6-3 in the final match on Center Court.
Earlier, defending singles champion Chanelle Scheepers of South Africa cruised to a 6-0, 6-3 victory over Chinese wild-card Wang Qiang.
The 27-year-old Scheepers, who last year became the first South African woman in eight years to win a WTA title, needed 72 minutes to dispose of her opponent and set up a second-round meeting with 58th-ranked Bojana Jovanovski of Serbia.
Jovanovski also had an easy first-round win, beating Timea Babos of Hungary 6-1, 6-3.
Mandy Minella of Luxembourg had a tougher time in defeating Pauline Parmentier of France 7-5, 3-6, 6-3 on Court 3.
Britain’s Laura Robson advanced when Spain’s Maria-Teresa Toro-Flor retired injured when the Briton was leading 6-2, 3-1.
BELL CHALLENGE
AFP, QUEBEC
Kirsten Flipkens made the most of her first WTA finals opportunity, capping a dream week at the Bell Challenge with a 6-1, 7-5 victory over eighth-seeded Lucie Hradecka in Sunday’s final.
Both finalists were seeking a first career WTA title. Hradecka had come up short in four prior finals, while Flipkens, 26, had never before reached a championship match.
It did not look that way on Sunday as she dispatched Hradecka of the Czech Republic in 69 minutes.
Her triumph punctuated a week that included the first-round upset of top-seeded Slovakian Dominika Cibulkova and a semi-final win over third-seeded German Mona Barthel.
Flipkens’ previous best WTA showings were four trips to the semi-finals, most recently at ’s-Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands, this year.
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