Hsieh Su-wei became the latest seed to crash out at the Malaysian Open yesterday, while fellow Taiwanese Chang Kai-chen could not follow up her shock singles victory over top seed and world No. 10 Roberta Vinci on Tuesday as she exited the doubles.
Seventh seed Hsieh paid for a slow start to her second-round singles match against Kristina Kucova of Slovakia as she fell to a 6-1, 3-6, 6-3 defeat in 1 hour, 50 minutes on Center Court at the Kuala Lumpur Golf & Country Club.
World No. 139 Kucova saved nine of 11 break points and converted four of 12, winning 92 of the 174 points contested to oust the Taiwanese world No. 69 and advance to a quarter-final against either second seed Elina Svitolina of Ukraine or Japanese qualifier Risa Ozaki, who are due to play their second-round match today.
Svitolina is one of only three seeded players left in the Malaysian capital, alongside No. 6 Eugenie Bouchard of Canada and No. 3 Sabine Lisicki of Germany.
Bouchard cruised into the quarter-finals with a 6-1, 6-2 victory over Kurumi Nara of Japan in just 65 minutes in the second match on Center Court.
The world No. 52 did not face a single break point and converted four of 10 to set up a last-eight clash with Taiwan’s Chang or Cagla Buyukakcay of Turkey.
Lisicki found it tougher going against Czech qualifier Barbora Krejcikova, taking 1 hour, 45 minutes to complete a 7-5, 6-3 victory.
Also advancing to the quarter-finals yesterday was Wang Qiang, who defeated fellow Chinese Duan Ying-ying 6-4, 6-4.
In the doubles quarter-finals, Chang and Oksana Kalashnikova fell to a 6-4, 3-6, 10-5 loss to top-seeded Chinese duo Liang Chen and Wang Yafan.
In the semi-finals, the top seeds face Katarzyna Piter of Poland and Maryna Zanevska of Ukraine, who ousted fourth-seeded Russian pairing Marina Melnikova and Alexandra Panova 6-2, 6-7 (2/7), 10-8.
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
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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