Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei fell to a crushing defeat in her opening round-robin match at the season-ending WTA Tournament of Champions in Sofia on Tuesday as Caroline Wozniacki sped to an easy straight-sets victory.
Top seed Wozniacki defeated Hsieh 6-2, 6-2 in 60 minutes, while it took Roberta Vinci five minutes longer to rout Slovakia’s Daniela Hantuchova 6-1, 6-2.
Wozniacki converted all five of her break points and only lost her serve once, in the second set.
“I always try to finish my matches in two sets and I am happy that this time it worked,” said Wozniacki, who is coming off titles in Seoul and Moscow. “I will try to finish this season with a hat-trick.”
Wozniacki’s straight-sets victory was nothing like her last meeting with Hsieh in Beijing a few weeks ago, when she trailed Hsieh by a set and 3-0, before finding her range and grinding out a 6-7(5/7), 7-6(7/3), 6-0 victory.
Earlier, fourth-seeded Vinci dominated throughout against Hantuchova, breaking the Slovakian five times. The two traded breaks to start the second set, but the Italian then jumped out to a 4-1 lead to take control.
“I was playing well — when I’m playing well it’s difficult to play against me. I don’t think she was comfortable with my game,” Vinci told the WTA Web site. “If I continue to play like this I think I have a good chance at making the semis or final this week.”
Hantuchova acknowledged that Vinci was a worthy winner.
“I never go onto the court not believing in myself — but today she played extremely well, not making any mistakes, especially in the first set,” Hantuchova told the WTA Web site. “She totally outplayed me and all of the credit to her for the way she played against me out there today.”
Wozniacki was next scheduled to face Vinci, with the winner likely clinching a spot in Saturday’s semi-finals. The first two in each group advance.
“It’s going to be tough — Roberta changes the rhythm up a lot,” Wozniacki told the WTA Web site. “I’ll have to be prepared for that — it’s going to be a tough one tomorrow [Wednesday].”
In the other group, Bulgaria’s Tsvetana Pironkova came from behind to defeat sixth seed Zheng Jie of China 2-6, 6-4, 7-6 (7/4).
Pironkova took a 3-0 lead in the third set, before being forced into a tiebreaker.
The WTA Tournament of Champions in Sofia features the six highest-ranked players who have won a title during the season, but did not qualify for the WTA Championships, along with two wild cards.
It is the final event on the WTA calendar.
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