Taiwan’s Latisha Chan and Chan Hao-ching clinched the women’s doubles title at the Qatar Open in Doha on Saturday, defeating Anna-Lena Groenefeld of Germany and Demi Schuurs of the Netherlands 2-1.
The Chan sisters eased through the first set against their fourth-seeded rivals 6-1.
In the second set, Groenefeld and Schuurs put up more of a fight and topped the Taiwanese duo 3-6, forcing a super tie-break.
Photo: Reuters
The sisters eventually won the super tie-break 10-6 to claim the women’s doubles title.
This victory marked the Chan sisters’ second women’s doubles title of this season after they won the title at the Hobart International in Sydney, Australia, in January.
It marked the 14th women’s doubles championship of their career and their second women’s doubles title in Doha after first winning the Qatar Open in 2016.
WOMEN’S SINGLES FINAL
Reuters, DOHA
Belgium’s Elise Mertens rallied from a set down at the Qatar Open to beat top seed Simona Halep 3-6, 6-4, 6-3 and clinch her first Premier-level title.
After both players dropped their opening service game, Halep took control of the encounter by winning 18 consecutive points from 3-3 to clinch the first set.
World No. 3 Halep grabbed an early break in the second set, but Mertens responded immediately to get the match back on serve.
Unseeded Mertens held her nerve to fend off two break points in the seventh game before she broke Halep’s serve to love en route to claiming her first set in six played against the Romanian.
With momentum firmly on her side, Mertens claimed a crucial early break in the deciding set and went on to hold off a late Halep surge to win her fifth WTA title.
Mertens, ranked No. 21 in the world, recorded three top-10 victories in Doha this week, also beating Kiki Bertens and Angelique Kerber in the quarter-finals and semi-finals, respectively.
The 23-year-old enjoyed a breakthrough season last year, winning three titles, and has since maintained her steady progress on the WTA tour.
Halep, who last weekend helped Romania to their first-ever Fed Cup semi-final, struggled physically in the closing stages and needed medical assistance for her right foot.
“Honestly, I wanted to lift this beautiful trophy, but Elise deserved it very much,” said Halep, who won the Doha Open women’s single title in 2014.
Taiwanese world No. 1 women’s doubles star Hsieh Su-wei on Saturday overcame a first-set loss to win her opening match at the Madrid Open. Top seeds Hsieh and partner Elise Mertens of Belgium, with whom she last month won her fourth Indian Wells women’s doubles title, bounced back from a rocky first set to beat Asia Muhammad of the US and Aldila Sutjiadi of Indonesia 2-6, 6-4, 10-2. Hsieh and Mertens were next to face Heather Watson of the UK and Xu Yifan of China in the round of 16. Thirty-eight-year-old Hsieh last month reclaimed her world No. 1 spot after her Indian
EYES ON THE PRIZE: Armed with three solid men’s singles shuttlers and doubles Olympic champions, Taiwan aim to make their first Thomas Cup semi-final, Chou Tien-chen said Taiwanese badminton star Tai Tzu-ying yesterday quickly dispatched Malaysia’s Goh Jin Wei in straight sets, while her male counterpart Chou Tien-chen beat Germany’s Kai Schaefer, as Taiwan’s women’s and men’s teams won their Group B opening rounds of the TotalEnergies BWF Thomas and Uber Cup Finals in Chengdu, China. World No. 5 Tai beat Goh 21-19, 22-20 in a speedy 33 minutes, her fourth straight victory over the world No. 24 shuttler since they first faced each other in the quarter-finals of the 2018 Malaysia Open, where Tai went on to win the women’s singles title. Malaysia followed up Tai’s opening victory
Chen Yi-tung (陳奕通) secured a historic Olympic berth on Sunday by winning the senior men’s foil event at the 2024 Asia Oceania Zonal Olympic Fencing Qualifiers in United Arab Emirates. Chen defeated Samuel Elijah of Singapore 15-4 in the final in Dubai to secure the only wild card in the event, making him the first male Olympian fencer from Taiwan in 36 years and only the sixth Taiwanese fencer to ever qualify for the quadrennial event. The last appearance by a Taiwanese male fencer at the Olympics was in 1988, when Wang San-tsai (王三財) and Cheng Ming-hsiang (鄭明祥) competed in Seoul. The
A soccer jersey carrying a national map including disputed Western Sahara has become a hot commodity in Morocco after a diplomatic dispute with Algeria. Retailers said RS Berkane jerseys have been flying off the shelves after a Confederation of African Football (CAF) Cup match against Algerian club USM Alger was canceled last month over the jerseys. “We are overwhelmed by the influx of messages and requests,” said Brahim Rabii, representative of the official RS Berkane jersey distributor. Algeria broke off diplomatic relations with Morocco in 2021, partly over the issue of Western Sahara. The former Spanish colony is largely controlled by Morocco, but claimed