Chan Yung-jan joined fellow Taiwanese Hsieh Su-wei in the quarter-finals of the women’s doubles competition at the China Open yesterday.
Chan and her partner, Zheng Jie of China, took advantage of their superior service game — getting in 80 percent of their first serves with no double faults to their opponents’ three — and converted three of 13 break-point chances to defeat third-seeded Australian duo Ashleigh Barty and Casey Dellacqua 6-4, 6-4 in 1 hour, 15 minutes at the National Tennis Center in Beijing.
The victory set up a quarter-final on the Moon Court this afternoon against Zimbabwe’s Cara Black and Sania Mirza of India, the eighth seeds who defeated Chan’s younger sister, Chan Hao-ching, in the final of the Pan Pacific Open doubles tournament in Tokyo on Saturday.
Photo: Reuters
Hsieh and her partner, Peng Shuai of China, are to face sixth-seeded US pairing Raquel Kops-Jones and Abigail Spears on center court tonight.
In the women’s singles matches, world No. 4 Agnieszka Radwanska powered her way through to the last 16 with a convincing victory over US teenager Madison Keys.
The Polish third seed took 1 hour, 15 minutes to claim a 6-3, 6-2 victory over the 18-year-old, who is tipped as one of the rising stars in women’s tennis.
Radwanska, a previous winner in Beijing in 2011, beat Keys at Wimbledon during the summer, and praised her opponent after their meeting at the National Tennis Center.
“I think she’s one of the youngest talented players coming out,” she told reporters after the second-round match.
Andrea Petkovic continued her stunning form at the tournament by dumping out former Roland Garros winner Svetlana Kuznetsova 4-6, 6-4, 6-1 in their second-round match.
The German, who is ranked 43, took just more than two hours to claim victory over the 25th-ranked Russian, a previous winner in Beijing in 2006 and 2009.
Petkovic’s victory over the 2009 French Open singles champion follows her stunning first-round defeat of second seed and current Beijing champion Victoria Azarenka.
The 26-year-old said claiming the scalps of both the Belarussian and Kuznetsova had given her a massive confidence boost.
“This is the first tournament that I’ve been able to really keep up my intensity and keep up my focus. I think I played two good matches,” she said. “For me, just personally, it’s really important to see that I can still beat the players on the top level, two past Grand Slam champions.”
Eighth seed Jelena Jankovic of Serbia booked her place in the last 16 with a 6-3, 5-7, 6-3 victory over Kazakhstan’s Galina Voskoboeva, while Slovenia’s Polona Hercog defeated 14th seed Ana Ivanovic of Serbia 6-4, 6-4.
In the men’s tournament, eighth-seed American John Isner beat Spaniard Roberto Bautista Agut 6-2, 6-7, 6-4, while Australia’s former world No. 1 Lleyton Hewitt fell in a 6-0, 6-2 rout to Fabio Fognini.
The Italian will face second seed Rafael Nadal in the quarter-finals if the Spaniard beats Germany’s Philipp Kohlschreiber in their match, to be played yesterday evening.
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