China’s Gong Maoxin and Li Zhe beat Taiwan’s Huang Liang-chi and Yang Tsung-hua 6-3, 6-3, 4-6, 6-3 yesterday to take an unassailable 3-0 lead in their Davis Cup Asia/Oceania Group I relegation playoff in Tianjin, China.
The reverse singles are scheduled for today, but even if Taiwan win both, China cannot lose the best-of-five match showdown following defeats for Yang and Chen Ti in the opening singles rubbers on Friday.
Taiwan will now have to play Indonesia in a second-round relegation playoff in September. The losers will be relegated to Group II for next year’s competition.
Photo: AFP
Meanwhile, Nam Ji-sung and Lim Yong-kyu pulled one back in the doubles for South Korea to leave Japan with a 2-1 lead in their Group I second round tie in Tokyo yesterday.
The Korean duo raced to a 7-5, 6-1, 6-4 win over Go Soeda and Yasutaka Uchiyama in the third match of the best-of-five contest.
Former world No. 1 Lleyton Hewitt inspired Australia to a five-set doubles victory to take the edge over hosts Uzbekistan in their tie in Namangan.
Hewitt, rested from Friday’s opening singles, partnered Matthew Ebden to battle out a 7-5, 6-7 (4/7), 6-4, 3-6, 6-3 win over the Uzbek pairing of Denis Istomin and Farrukh Dustov.
The hard-fought win gave 28-time Davis Cup winners Australia a 2-1 edge heading into today’s two reverse singles to decide the tie on clay.
The winner of the tie advances to September’s World Group playoffs as Australia bid to return to the competition’s top tier for the first time since 2007.
Hewitt, the former Wimbledon and US Open champion, was playing with Ebden for the first time. They were the fresher pair after Istomin and Dustov were backing up from playing in Friday’s singles.
The Uzbeks broke Hewitt’s serve in the third game of the opening set, but the Australians fought back to 3-3 and pounced on Istomin’s service game at 6-5 to take the first set.
The home side rallied to take the second in a tiebreak, but another crucial break on Istomin’s serve late in the third set put Australia 2-1 up.
Istomin and Dustov fought back to send the match to a deciding set, but Hewitt and Ebden fought off their threat.
The Australians secured a crucial early break, from 0-40 down, and held off the Uzbeks, with a crucial hold from 0-40 down on Hewitt’s serve to reach 5-2.
Ebden served out for the rubber with the victory improving Hewitt’s doubles record in the competition to 14-3.
Elsewhere, Andrey Golubev and Yuriy Schukin defeated Czech pair Jan Hajek and Radek Stepanek in Astana to keep Kazakhstan’s hopes of reaching the Davis Cup semi-finals alive.
The hosts won 7-6 (7/2), 6-4, 6-3 in two hours 20 minutes to make it 2-1 in their quarter-final encounter against the tournament holders.
“It was a hard match, but it makes the victory even more sweet,” Schukin said.
“We had to battle hard for every single point in such a tight match. We’re happy to beat the Davis Cup champions and continue our fight for a place in the semi-finals,” he said.
Hajek and Stepanek were playing together for the first time, and they lost the opening set in a tiebreak after both pairs had exchanged breaks.
The decisive moment in the second set arrived in the ninth game when Golubev and Schukin broke Stepanek’s serve to take a two-set lead.
The match was already almost two hours old heading into the third set, but the Czechs’ resistance would not last much longer.
An immediate break of Stepanek’s serve helped Kazakhstan run away with the third set, and the tie will now be decided today, when Mikhail Kukushkin is due to take on Lukas Rosol before Golubev and Hajek are scheduled to meet in the final singles rubber.
Shohei Ohtani and his wife arrived in South Korea with his Los Angeles Dodgers teammates yesterday ahead of their season-opening games with the San Diego Padres next week. Ohtani, wearing a black training suit and a cap backwards, was the first Dodgers player who showed up at the arrival gate of Incheon International Airport, west of Seoul. His wife, Mamiko Tanaka, walked several steps behind him. As a crowd of fans, many wearing Dodgers jerseys, shouted his name and cheered slogans, Ohtani briefly waved his hand, but did not say anything before he entered a limousine bus with his wife. Fans held placards
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EYEING TOP SPOT: A victory in today’s final against Storm Hunter and Katerina Siniakova would return 38-year-old Hsieh Su-wei to the world No. 1 ranking Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei and Elise Mertens on Thursday secured a spot in the women’s doubles finals at the BNP Paribas Open after dispatching Nicole Melichar-Martinez of the US and Australia’s Ellen Perez 6-2, 7-6 (7/5) at Indian Wells. Hsieh and her Belgian partner Mertens, who won the Australian Open in late January, coasted through the first set after breaking their opponents’ serve twice, but found the going tougher in the second. Both pairs could only muster one break point over 12 games, neither of which were converted, leaving the set to be decided by a tiebreaker. Hsieh and Mertens took a 6-3 lead,
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