Denmark’s Caroline Wozniacki and the evergreen Venus Williams won their semi-finals at the Auckland Classic yesterday to set up a final showdown between two former world No. 1’s.
Wozniacki advanced to her 38th WTA career final with a hard-fought 4-6, 6-3, 6-4 victory over Czech Barbora Zahlavova Strycova.
Then Williams, showing few signs of slowing down at the age of 34, joined her in today’s title match with a 6-0, 6-3 romp over fellow American Lauren Davis.
Photo: AFP
For Williams, who lost last year’s Auckland final to Ana Ivanovic, it marks her 76th appearance in a final. Already the sixth-oldest woman to claim a title after she won in Dubai last year, if she wins she will become the fourth-oldest champion.
Williams did suffer a minor hiccup against Davis. After winning the first seven games on the trot, she dropped three of the next four to trail 3-2 in the second, before reeling off the last four to wrap up victory.
The American has won all five of her previous meetings with Wozniacki, but the Dane, who has hit a purple patch of form since reaching last year’s US Open final, was hopeful of ending her drought.
“She’s obviously a tough competitor,” Wozniacki said. “It won’t be easy, but I’m looking forward to it. I’m happy to be in my first final of the year, and hopefully there will be many more to come.”
Wozniacki looked to be in trouble against Zahlavova Strycova after losing the first set then falling a break down in the second.
However, she rediscovered her form in the nick of time, winning 10 of the next 13 games to take the second set and build a decisive 4-2 lead in the third.
“For me, it was about just staying in the match. I didn’t start off too well, I didn’t really feel the depth of the ball that I wanted to, but I started playing better as it went on and I think she did too. I just had to kind of get going out there,” Wozniacki said. “We were out there for a long time, but I knew the longer we went I wouldn’t really feel tired. I was still feeling fine at the end of the match, but I’m definitely just happy to get through this one today.”
SHENZHEN OPEN
AFP, BEIJING
Top seed Simona Halep sailed into the WTA Shenzhen Open final yesterday and is to face Timea Bacsinszky after the Swiss world No. 47 upset double Wimbledon winner Petra Kvitova.
Romanian Halep, ranked third in the world and last year’s French Open runner-up, disposed of unseeded home player Zheng Saisai in straight sets, 6-2, 6-3.
However, the scoreline belied the fact that the world No. 97 put up enough resistance to draw the match out to 1 hour, 26 minutes.
Czech Kvitova, the world No. 4 and second seed at the US$500,000 tournament, was favorite to go through in the other semi-final.
However, she was broken in the third game and although the Wimbledon champion of 2011 and last year saved five set points, Bacsinszky finally clinched the first set.
In the second set Kvitova had three break points in a long fourth game, but the 25-year-old Swiss, who had not reached a WTA final since 2010, held on and showed no nerves on match point, seizing her first opportunity to seal victory.
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