The Chan sisters lost out to top seeds Martina Hingis and Sania Mirza in a nail-biting women’s doubles final at the China Open on Saturday night.
Sixth-seeded Taiwanese sisters Chan Hao-ching and Chan Yung-jan edged a tight first set, as they rallied from 5-2 down in the tiebreak — fighting off two set points — to take the set 7-6 (11/9) in 67 minutes.
However, the Swiss-Indian duo then upped their game, winning 14 points in a row to take the second set 6-1 in just 25 minutes and they clinched the victory 10-8 in the super tiebreak in a match lasting 1 hour, 40 minutes.
Photo: screen grab from Facebook
“I think the first set, we were probably a bit unlucky not to win,” Mirza told the WTA Web site. “We got a pretty terrible call at that break point to go up 3-2, then after that we probably should have won that tiebreak because we were up the whole time. All credit to them, though, they came up and made us hit one extra ball. They probably played us the best out of the last five or six times we’ve played them.”
The Chan sisters now have two weeks to prepare for the WTA Finals in Singapore.
“Still a great week with this beautiful runner up plate,was a really close match, congrats to our opponents!” Chan Yung-jan said on Facebook. “We had a good time here in Beijing, finally we can go home for a breath stop before Singapore, looking forward to play the WTA Finals and thanks for all the support!”
In the men’s singles final yesterday, Novak Djokovic defeated Rafael Nadal 6-2, 6-2 to win his sixth China Open title and improve his record at the tournament to a sterling 29-0.
In the women’s singles final, Wimbledon runner-up Garbine Muguruza captured her second career WTA Tour title, rallying in both sets to defeat Timea Bacsinszky 7-5, 6-4.
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