Top seeds Hsieh Su-wei of Taiwan and China’s Peng Shuai advanced to the quarter-finals of the Mutua Madrid Open on Wednesday.
The cross-strait duo, who lost in their opening match in their past two events and who were beaten in the first round in Madrid last year, got back to winning ways with a 6-4, 6-1 victory over Italy’s Francesca Schiavone and Silvia Soler-Espinosa of Spain.
Hsieh and Peng converted five of 11 break-point chances in 1 hour, 5 minutes to set up a last-eight meeting with fifth seeds Cara Black of Zimbabwe and India’s Sania Mirza, who converted six of their seven break-point opportunities in their 6-4, 6-1 triumph over Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Chanelle Scheepers of South Africa — their 15th win in their past 18 matches.
“We got the win last week in Portugal, so we’re getting matches under our belt,” Black told the WTA Web site. “We had a tough match today, tough opponents. We’re happy we came out and played really well. We’re looking forward to the next match.”
“We had to adapt to the conditions pretty quickly because we just got here on Sunday, but it’s been good,” Mirza told the WTA Web site. “Today was a much better match than yesterday and hopefully we can keep getting better as the tournament progresses.”
Also advancing to the quarter-finals on Wednesday were Italian duo Sara Errani and Roberta Vinci, who defeated Russia’s Svetlana Kuznetsova and Samantha Stosur of Australia 6-3, 6-1.
After capturing their fourth Grand Slam title at the Australian Open in January, Errani and Vinci had been through a bit of a drought, not reaching a final for five events, but the No. 2 seeds did not surrender more than three games in a set en route to the Stuttgart title and they are set to take on Vania King of the US and China’s Zheng Jie.
Also advancing 6-4, 6-1 were sixth-seeded US pairing Raquel Kops-Jones and Abigail Spears, who overcame a 3-0, two-break deficit in the first set against Klara Koukalova of the Czech Republic and Romania’s Monica Niculescu.
Their quarter-final opponents are to be Spanish duo Garbine Muguruza and Carla Suarez Navarro, who were shock 7-5, 6-2 winners over fourth seeds Kveta Peschke of the Czech Republic and Slovenia’s Katarina Srebotnik.
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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
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