Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei and Chinese partner Peng Shuai reached the quarter-finals of the US Open women’s doubles on Tuesday, overcoming a bumpy start to continue their good form at Grand Slam events.
The fourth-seeded Hsieh and Peng, who won the Wimbledon doubles title earlier this year, upended Serbian Jelena Jankovic and Croatian Mirjana Lucic-Baroni 6-4, 6-2 in 71 minutes to book their spot in the final eight.
The 15th-seeded Serb-Croat duo seemed determined to avenge their quarter-final loss to Hsieh and Peng at Wimbledon, surging to a 4-1 lead to open the match.
Photo: AFP
However, Hsieh and Peng quickly recovered breaking serve in the sixth game and running off the final five games of the set.
“At the beginning of the match we were both a little nervous,” Hsieh said. “There were some shots that we didn’t play very well, but after we finally got a chance to break our opponents’ serve, we got some momentum and went on to win the match.”
The duo were more dominant in the second set, winning 84 percent of the points in their four service games while breaking their opponents twice.
“I’m very happy because of how well we’ve done so far and also because the victory was a big step forward in getting us into the WTA year-end doubles event in Istanbul,” the 27-year-old Taiwanese said.
In the quarter-finals, Hsieh and Peng will face the formidable 10th-seeded Chinese-Indian duo Zheng Jie and Sania Mirza, who swept aside the sixth-seeded Anna-Lena Groenefeld of Germany and Kveta Peschke of the Czech Republic 6-2, 6-3 in their round-of-16 match.
Hsieh, who has teamed up with both Zheng and Mirza in the past, acknowledged the challenge her former partners would pose.
“They will not be easy opponents for us, but my partner and I will do our best,” she said.
Hsieh and Peng have clinched three doubles titles so far this year: at the Italian Open in Rome in May, Wimbledon in July and the Western and Southern Open in Cincinnati last month.
Meanwhile, Kristina Mladenovic of France and Daniel Nestor of Canada beat Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and German partner Martin Emmrich 7-6 (7/5), 6-3 in the mixed doubles quarter-finals.
“We had a chance to win if Emmrich had not sprained his ankle,” Chan said.
Taiwanese world No. 1 women’s doubles star Hsieh Su-wei on Saturday overcame a first-set loss to win her opening match at the Madrid Open. Top seeds Hsieh and partner Elise Mertens of Belgium, with whom she last month won her fourth Indian Wells women’s doubles title, bounced back from a rocky first set to beat Asia Muhammad of the US and Aldila Sutjiadi of Indonesia 2-6, 6-4, 10-2. Hsieh and Mertens were next to face Heather Watson of the UK and Xu Yifan of China in the round of 16. Thirty-eight-year-old Hsieh last month reclaimed her world No. 1 spot after her Indian
EYES ON THE PRIZE: Armed with three solid men’s singles shuttlers and doubles Olympic champions, Taiwan aim to make their first Thomas Cup semi-final, Chou Tien-chen said Taiwanese badminton star Tai Tzu-ying yesterday quickly dispatched Malaysia’s Goh Jin Wei in straight sets, while her male counterpart Chou Tien-chen beat Germany’s Kai Schaefer, as Taiwan’s women’s and men’s teams won their Group B opening rounds of the TotalEnergies BWF Thomas and Uber Cup Finals in Chengdu, China. World No. 5 Tai beat Goh 21-19, 22-20 in a speedy 33 minutes, her fourth straight victory over the world No. 24 shuttler since they first faced each other in the quarter-finals of the 2018 Malaysia Open, where Tai went on to win the women’s singles title. Malaysia followed up Tai’s opening victory
Chen Yi-tung (陳奕通) secured a historic Olympic berth on Sunday by winning the senior men’s foil event at the 2024 Asia Oceania Zonal Olympic Fencing Qualifiers in United Arab Emirates. Chen defeated Samuel Elijah of Singapore 15-4 in the final in Dubai to secure the only wild card in the event, making him the first male Olympian fencer from Taiwan in 36 years and only the sixth Taiwanese fencer to ever qualify for the quadrennial event. The last appearance by a Taiwanese male fencer at the Olympics was in 1988, when Wang San-tsai (王三財) and Cheng Ming-hsiang (鄭明祥) competed in Seoul. The
Rafael Nadal on Tuesday lost in straight sets to 31st-ranked Jiri Lehecka in the fourth round at the Madrid Open, while Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei advanced to the semi-finals in the women’s doubles. Nadal said that he was feeling good about his progress following his latest injury layoff. Nadal called it a “positive week” in every way and said his body held up well. “I was able to play four matches, a couple of tough matches,” Nadal said. “So very positive, winning three matches, playing four matches at the high level of tennis. I enjoyed a lot playing at home. I leave here with