Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching was knocked out in the first round of the doubles at the Aegon Classic in Birmingham, England, on Thursday, despite fighting back after losing the first set.
Chan and Andreja Klepac of Slovenia, who were trailing 3-1 against second seeds Timea Babos of Hungary and Kristina Mladenovic on Wednesday when rain delayed the match until the following day, lost the first set 7-5, but fought back to win the second 6-4 and force a super tiebreak.
However, the second seeds proved too strong in the decider at the Edgbaston Priory Club, completing a 7-5, 4-6, 10-6 victory in 1 hour, 26 minutes.
Photo: Reuters
Both pairings saved four of eight break-point chances while also converting four of eight, but the second seeds edged the total points won 73 to 72 to set up a quarter-final against Michaella Krajicek of the Netherlands and Barbora Strycova of the Czech Republic, who defeated wild-cards Eugenie Bouchard and Svetlana Kuznetsova 6-2, 6-3.
Chan’s elder sister, Chan Yung-jan, and Zheng Jie of China were due to play wild-cards Simona Halep of Romania and Heather Watson of Britain in the quarter-finals late yesterday.
In the singles on Thursday, Sabine Lisicki, the record-breaking German who would love to atone for her tearful loss in the 2013 Wimbledon final, produced another stunning grass-court performance to reach the quarter-finals.
On Wednesday, Lisicki launched 27 aces, a record for the WTA Tour, while beating 18-year-old Belinda Bencic. Twenty-fours later, she hit another eight plus a high proportion of winners as she won 7-6 (9/7), 6-4 against Magdalena Rybarikova, a former title holder in Birmingham.
Lisicki, who also holds the record for the fastest women’s serve — 211kph — hits her ground-strokes as hard as anyone on the WTA Tour too, which dragged a resilient and imaginative performance from her Slovakian opponent.
Rybarikova used her a natural grass-court player’s skills with slice, varied serving and volleying, and after breaking back from 4-2, held three set points in the first set tiebreaker, but Lisicki played two of them excellently, was donated a double fault on the third and, after closing the set out with another fierce first serve, broke early in the second.
“I actually did feel in control,” said Lisicki, whose consistency has sometimes been called into question. “I felt that I was hitting the ball better and that I was building up the points better, was hitting cleaner. So the longer I played, I think the better I played.”
Her confidence has also appeared to rise with her past two performances.
Asked if, when playing the way she wanted, she could beat anybody on grass, she answered: “Yes — not only on this surface.”
Lisicki now has a repeat of the final she won four years ago against Daniela Hantuchova. The experienced Slovakian won 6-4, 7-5 against Michelle Larcher de Brito, who ousted titleholder Ana Ivanovic in the first round.
Karolina Pliskova, the tall and promising sixth-seeded Czech, won twice in the day — against Britain’s Johanna Konta and Kazakhstan’s Zarina Diyas — to earn a quarter-final with Carla Suarez Navarro, the third-seeded Spaniard, who appears to be adapting her clay-court instincts to grass.
Suarez Navarro has gained more wins on the WTA Tour than anyone else this year and her 6-3, 6-4 success against Svetlana Kuznetsova, the Russian two-time Grand Slam winner, was her 35th.
Top seed Halep’s grass-court form showed encouraging signs too. Her 6-1, 6-3 win against Klara Koukalova of the Czech Republic earned her a meeting with Mladenovic, the cosmopolitan Frenchwoman with the big serve and the liking for grass, who has beaten two seeds.
Of Swiss domicile and Serbian parentage, Mladenovic produced another nicely judged tactical performance to beat 10th seed Strycova, last year’s runner-up, 7-6 (7/4), 6-2.
It followed an even better victory on Wednesday against Wimbledon finalist Bouchard, the fifth seed, in which Mladenovic reduced the high-profile Canadian to “absolute frustration.”
Friday’s other quarter-final was between unseeded Katerina Siniakova of the Czech Republic and Angelique Kerber, the tenacious fourth-seeded German who saved four break points in the sixth game against Jelena Jankovic, before accelerating to a 6-4, 6-2 victory over the former world No. 1.
TIGHT GAME: The Detroit Pistons, the NBA’s second-best team, barely outlasted the Washington Wizards, who fell to an NBA-worst 1-10 with their ninth consecutive loss Cade Cunningham’s triple double, Daniss Jenkins’ three-pointer at the buzzer and Javonte Green’s overtime dunk lifted Detroit past Washington 137-135 on Monday, stretching the Pistons’ win streak to seven games. In an unexpected thriller, the NBA’s second-best team barely outlasted a Wizards club that fell to an NBA-worst 1-10 with their ninth consecutive loss. “We knew how big this game was for us,” Jenkins said. “We wasn’t going to let nothing stop us from getting this W.” Cunningham made 14-of-45 shots and 16-of-18 free throws for a career-high 46 points, and added 12 rebounds, 11 assists, five steals and two
With a hat-trick on Wednesday, Victor Osimhen moved atop the UEFA Champions League scoring table, with the Nigeria striker netting all three goals in Galatasaray’s 3-0 victory over Ajax in Amsterdam. Osimhen moved to six goals this season in Europe’s elite club competition, one more than Harry Kane, Kylian Mbappe and Erling Haaland. The Istanbul club signed Osimhen to a permanent deal from SSC Napoli in the summer for a record transfer fee in the Turkish League reportedly worth US$86 million. The 26-year-old striker needed less than 20 minutes to complete his first hat-trick in the competition. He headed in the opener in the
An amateur soccer league organized by farmers, students and factory workers in rural China has unexpectedly drawn millions of fans and inspired big cities to form their own, raising hopes China can grow talent from the ground up and finally become a global force. The nation of 1.4 billion people has about 200 million soccer fans, more than any other country, but it has failed to build world-class teams, partly due to a top-down approach where clubs pick players from a very small pool of prescreened candidates. The professional game is marred by a history of fixed matches, corruption, and dismal performances,
Amanda Anisimova on Wednesday pulled off a stellar comeback to get the better of Iga Swiatek 6-7 (3/7), 6-4, 6-2 and book her spot in the last four of the WTA Finals in Riyadh, while Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei won in the doubles at the women’s year-ending event. Making her tournament debut this week, the fourth-seeded Anisimova secured the runner-up spot in the Serena Williams Group behind Elena Rybakina. Rybakina completed round-robin play with a perfect 3-0 record, thanks to a 6-4, 6-4 success against Russian alternate Ekaterina Alexandrova earlier in the day. Anisimova improved her three-set record this season to an impressive
RSS