Taiwan’s Chan Yung-jan and Zheng Jie of China qualified for their first Grand Slam women’s doubles final since the 2010 US Open at the Australian Open yesterday.
The 14th seeds broke Michaella Krajicek of the Netherlands and Barbora Zahlavova Strycova of the Czech Republic to take a 5-3 lead, then held serve to take the first set 6-3.
The cross-strait duo then broke the 13th seeds twice at the start of the second set, racing into a 4-0 lead before holding their service games to complete a 6-3, 6-2 victory on Margaret Court Arena, winning match point by challenging a call against them that proved to be in by the slimmest of margins.
Photo: EPA
Chan and Zheng saved all five break-point chances they faced while converting three of six, hitting 25 winners to complete the victory in just 1 hour, 11 minutes at Melbourne Park.
The Taiwanese-Chinese pairing face Bethanie Mattek-Sands of the US and Lucie Safarova of the Czech Republic in tomorrow’s final after the unseeded duo won the first set of their semi-final 6-0 before 16th-seeded German duo Julia Goerges and Anna-Lena Groenefeld were forced to retire with Goerges suffering an illness.
“I feel sorry for Julia that she’s feeling so sick, but I think we played well and we were ready,” Safarova told the Australian Open Web site. “We’ve had a tough draw from the first round and we really pulled out a good game there, so now we will get ready for the final.”
The two are pairing up for the first time in Melbourne.
“I know Bethanie quite a bit and my coach is a good friend of her husband, so in the off-season we were messaging and we said: ‘Let’s go for the doubles in Melbourne.’ Seems like a good decision,” Safarova said.
The Czech player said she is expecting a difficult match in tomorrow’s final.
“We watched [Chan and Zheng] play today. They played well,” she said.
In the men’s singles, Serb world No. 1 Novak Djokovic blasted Canada’s Milos Raonic in straight sets to make his fifth Australian Open semi-final.
The top seed was in brilliant form in dishing out a 7-6 (7/5), 6-4, 6-2 hammering of the world No. 8 in 2 hours and faces defending champion Stan Wawrinka for a place in Sunday’s final.
Djokovic looks the player to beat and was in outstanding touch on Rod Laver Arena, hitting 33 winners and just 17 unforced errors, with three service breaks and winning 89 percent of his first serves.
It is to be his 25th Grand Slam semi-final tomorrow.
Raonic, one of the biggest servers in men’s tennis, could not get one break point on Djokovic’s serve, with the Serb now dropping only one service game in the tournament.
“It was a great performance tonight. I returned very well and tried to get as many of the balls back in play and I felt I had a good chance from the back of the court,” Djokovic said.
Elsewhere, having seen five match points against Kei Nishikori wiped out, Stanislas Wawrinka was surprised when the Japanese attempted a dropshot from the baseline at 6-6 in a tiebreak near the end of their quarter-final.
Two sets down and clinging on grimly, the best that could be said of Nishikori’s “Hail Mary” shot was that it was a brave play.
A little more on the ball and it might have been considered “inspired.” As it was, it caught the net tape, bounced back on his side and handed defending champion Wawrinka a serve for the match.
The Swiss needed no further invitation, and blasted his 20th ace, a 208kph missile down the “T” to close out the 6-3, 6-4, 7-6 (8/6) rout of the fifth seed, who had upset him at the quarter-finals of the US Open.
“That [dropshot] I was really happy [with], because I was not going to get to that ball,” fourth seed Wawrinka told reporters. “Yeah, I had the wind with me, so it was not easy to make a dropshot, especially at that moment.”
It was also Wawrinka’s second “crazy” tiebreak in two matches at Melbourne Park, having been down 6-2 in the fourth set tiebreak against Spaniard Guillermo Garcia-Lopez.
In the women’s draw, the Williams sisters predicted a big future for US teenager Madison Keys, including Grand Slam titles, after she gatecrashed the semi-finals at Venus’ expense.
The 19-year-old has long been on the radar of US pundits desperate for a new generation to emerge from the Williams siblings’ long shadow and Keys lived up to the hype when she beat Venus.
Eighteen-time Grand Slam champion Serena, who faces Keys in today’s semi-final, said she believed the world No. 35 was a future major winner.
“Obviously, this is her first semi-finals,” Serena said. “I’m sure there’s going to be many more, including Grand Slam wins, for Madison. It’s a good match and I think they really just make a good team.”
Keys won 6-3, 4-6, 6-4, while Serena downed Dominika Cibulkova 6-2, 6-2.
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