Top seeds, world No. 2 Hsieh Su-wei of Taiwan and world No. 1 Peng Shuai of China, recorded their second straight 6-1, 6-2 victory in the women’s doubles at the BNP Paribas Open on Sunday to ease into the quarter-finals, while Taiwan’s Lu Yen-hsun cruised past No. 22 seed Philipp Kohlschreiber 6-2, 6-2 to make the round-of-32 in the men’s singles.
The Taiwanese-Chinese pairing saved both break points they faced, while winning four out of eight break-point chances to overcome Russian duo Alisa Kleybanova and Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova.
Hsieh and Peng’s 80th win together set up a quarter-final encounter with seventh-seeded Australian duo Ashleigh Barty and Casey Dellacqua, who they beat in last year’s Wimbledon final.
Photo: EPA
On the other side of the draw, defending champs and second seeds Ekaterina Makarova and Elena Vesnina also had a straight-sets win.
The Russians broke in each set against German pairing Julia Goerges and Anna-Lena Groenefeld for a 6-3, 6-4 victory.
“It was a good match for us,” Makarova told the WTA Web site. “We played against a strong team. We played against them in the Olympics, so we knew [the] team a little bit. It was a difficult match, with a lot of key points. We were just a bit more lucky to win the big points, so we’re really happy to be through.”
Photo: EPA
“We have great memories from winning here last year,” Makarova said. “We’re really enjoying our time together on court. We’re just trying to stay positive, help each other and support each other.”
The Russian doubles pairing next face No. 5 seeds Cara Black of Zimbabwe and Sania Mirza of India.
Russia’s Svetlana Kuznetsova and Samantha Stosur of Australia also reached the quarter-finals on Sunday, along with Japan’s Kimiko Date-Krumm and Barbora Zahlavova Strycova of the Czech Republic.
In the men’s singles, Lu saved all three break points he faced against Germany’s Kohlschreiber, won four of his eight break-point chances and delivered six aces to seal the victory in 68 minutes and set up a round-of-32 clash with big-serving 12th seed John Isner of the US.
Isner kept the US flag flying in the men’s field with a 7-6 (7/5), 6-3 victory over former world No. 3 Nikolay Davydenko of Russia.
Isner edged Lu in two tiebreak sets in the final at Auckland in January, but since winning that title, the American has been slowed by an ankle injury.
In other second-round ties, Novak Djokovic made it safely into the third round on Sunday, but said his straight-sets win over Victor Hanescu left room for improvement.
The world No. 2 and second seed — a two-time winner in the California desert — saved all five break points he faced on the way to a 7-6 (7/1), 6-2 victory.
“It was one of those days where you get to serve well and everything else is just kind of trying to find the way to play the right shots at the right time,” said Djokovic, who notched his seventh win over the 87th-ranked Romanian in as many career meetings. “I didn’t make any returns in the first set. [In the] second set I also struggled with the return, which is one of my better sides in the game, generally speaking.”
Djokovic, who won at Indian Wells in 2008 and 2011, has played sparingly this season, falling in the quarter-finals of the Australian Open to eventual champion Stanislas Wawrinka of Switzerland and losing in the semi-finals at Dubai to another Swiss, Roger Federer.
The Serb did not get a break chance in the opening set, but dominated the tiebreaker and took a quick 3-0 lead in the second. He said he would be working on a few things before his third-round match against Colombian Alejandro Gonzalez, a 6-4, 2-6, 7-6 (7/5) winner over Croatian Ivan Dodig.
Also on Sunday, Roberto Bautista Agut of Spain bounced fourth-seeded Tomas Berdych 4-6, 6-2, 6-4.
Bautista, ranked 53rd in the world, used a punishing ground game to notch his third career win over a top-10 player.
“I played unbelievable,” Bautista said. “I was not serving very well, I had to play my best tennis from the baseline to win the match.”
The 28-year-old Czech, an Australian Open semi-finalist who won in Rotterdam this year, arrived in California after a runner-up finish to Federer in Dubai and was at a loss to explain his off-key outing.
“Anything I touched today was basically bad and was wrong,” Berdych said. “Definitely my worst match that I had this year.”
Men’s sixth seed Juan Martin del Potro had been slated to open his campaign, but the Argentine withdrew with a left-wrist injury.
In the women’s singles action, second-seeded Agnieszka Radwanska of Poland led the way into the fourth round.
Radwanska, ranked third in the world, thumped 48th-ranked German Annika Beck 6-0, 6-0.
Beck did what she could to make a stand — notably in the fourth game of the second set, which went to deuce seven times — but was unable to get on the scoreboard in a match that lasted just 67 minutes.
Radwanska next faces France’s Alize Cornet, who battled for 3 hours, 26 minutes to beat the 14th-seeded Spaniard Carla Suarez Navarro 6-7 (4/7), 7-5, 6-3.
It was the second-longest match on the WTA Tour this year, after Maria Sharapova’s 3 hour, 28 minute win over Karin Knapp at the Australian Open.
Cornet fought off triple match points, serving 4-5, 0-40 in the second set en route to the victory.
“I don’t know how I won this match,” the Frenchwoman said, adding that fatigue may have worked in her favor in the third set. “The good thing when you are tired is you don’t ask too many questions, you just hit the ball. That’s better for me.”
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