Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei and Peng Shuai of China, the No. 2 seeds and defending champions at the WTA Finals in Singapore, stormed into the final with a 6-1, 6-4 semi-final victory over Alla Kudryavtseva of Russia and Anastasia Rodionova of Australia yesterday.
Kudryavtseva and Rodionova were fresh from winning their third WTA doubles title of the year in Tianjin, China, and they upset fourth-seeded Russian duo Ekaterina Makarova and Elena Vesnina in the quarter-finals, but they could find no way past Hsieh and Peng.
The cross-strait duo saved the only break-point chance they faced and held all nine of their service games, while converting three of five break-point chances to complete the victory in 1 hour, 5 minutes.
The win upped their season record to 24-9, and overall, the partnership has produced 97 wins against 34 defeats.
“We were playing better than in our first match because we were more used to the indoor courts,” Peng told the WTA Web site. “We started a little bit nervous today, but I think we played better as the match went on.”
The Taiwanese-Chinese pairing are to split up after the tournament, but they are hoping to finish on a high — and they take a 12-0 record in WTA doubles finals together into the final.
“We met in an ITF [International Tennis Federation] team when we were like 13 or 14,” Peng told the WTA Finals Web site. “We were juniors at the time, playing a few tournaments together, and that’s how we started out, but after we turned pro, we had like seven years where we didn’t play any doubles together.”
If they can win the Martina Navratilova trophy today, it would be their fourth major trophy this season. They captured the titles at Doha, Indian Wells and the French Open, while they also won Wimbledon last year.
“We’re really happy to do so well in our last tournament together,” Hsieh told the WTA Web site. “We’ve been playing together for so many years, so we’ll try to enjoy ourselves tomorrow and really try our best. We don’t know who we’re playing yet, but it will be a tough match for sure.”
No. 3 seeds Cara Black of Zimbabwe and India’s Sania Mirza, who is teaming up with Hsieh next season, were due to face Kveta Peschke of the Czech Republic and Katarina Srebotnik of Slovenia in the other semi-final later yesterday.
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