Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Chan Yung-jan face Red Group winners, top seeds and tournament favorites Martina Hingis and Sania Mirza in the semi-finals at the WTA Finals in Singapore at 12:30pm today after they finished second in the White Group with a 2-1 record.
The Swiss-Indian pairing defeated Timea Babos of Hungary and Kristina Mladenovic of France 6-4, 7-5 in 1 hour, 30 minutes yesterday to complete a clean sweep of their round-robin matches.
“We had played them twice before and we were 1-all, so we knew we had to come out and play well, like we’ve been trying to do every match here at the WTA Finals,” Mirza said in her courtside interview. “We just tried to come out and play our best, and that was enough to win today.”
Photo: AP
The victory extended the top seeds’ winning streak to 20 matches.
“It feels pretty good,” Hingis said. “Sania came up to me and asked me why don’t we try to play together, and at first we both had our partners, but as soon as we started we won a hat-trick right away at Indian Wells, Miami and Charleston. It was amazing how fast we clicked. It was a dream to come here to Singapore and hopefully we can keep winning here.”
The Chan sisters came second in the group due to having won a game fewer than Spanish duo Garbine Muguruza and Carla Suarez Navarro, despite having a higher win percentage.
The difference came down to the Spanish duo being taken to a 12th game in the first set of both of their victories, a 7-5, 6-4 win over the Chan sisters on Thursday and their 7-5, 6-2 win against Caroline Garcia and Katarina Srebotnik.
The Taiwanese duo followed up their opening 6-4, 7-6 (7/5) victory over Garcia and Srebotnik with a 6-2, 6-2 demolition of Bethanie Mattek-Sands and Lucie Safarova, which was not afforded the same status in a scoring system where the group placing is decided by the number of games won, rather than by the win percentage.
Should the Chan sisters have won that match 7-5, 7-5 they would have topped the table and avoided the top seeds in today’s semi-finals.
In a world in which sports are plagued by betting syndicates attempting to fix matches for financial gain, a scoring system which does not reward teams who play their best tennis to win matches in a fair and honest way, but penalizes a team for playing an exceptional match — such as the Chan sisters’ win over Mattek-Sands and Safarova — needs to be replaced.
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
Rafael Nadal on Wednesday said the upcoming French Open would be the moment to “give everything and die” on the court after his comeback from injury in Barcelona was curtailed by Alex de Minaur. The 22-time Grand Slam title winner, back playing this week after three months on the sidelines, battled well, but eventually crumbled 7-5, 6-1 against the world No. 11 from Australia in the second round. Nadal, 37, who missed virtually all of last season, is hoping to compete at the French Open next month where he is the record 14-time champion. The Spaniard said the clash with De Minaur was
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