Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei and Barbora Strycova of the Czech Republic survived a second-set fightback in the early hours of yesterday morning to book a spot in the doubles semi-finals at the WTA Finals in Shenzhen, China, while the Chan sisters were on the verge of elimination after their second straight defeat.
Second seeds Hsieh and Strycova outlasted Czech sixth seeds Barbora Krejcikova and Katerina Siniakova 6-1, 1-6, 10-5 in 1 hour, 15 minutes in a match that began on Tuesday, but finished after midnight.
The victory gave them a 2-0 record in the Purple Group and saw them advance to Saturday’s semi-finals at the season-ending tournament.
The reigning Wimbledon champions saved five of eight break points and converted two of three, winning 74 percent of points on their first serve to claim top spot in the group after their 6-4, 4-6, 10-5 victory over Australian Open champions Samantha Stosur and Zhang Shuai on Sunday.
“It was a really tough match for us, but we played really good,” doubles world No. 1 Strycova told the WTA Web site. “We helped each other, and at the end we were maybe — I would not say lucky, but we played a better tiebreak.”
Hsieh and Strycova fired 10 winners and committed just two unforced errors to race through the opening set, but the Czech duo, who won two Grand Slam titles last year, rallied to take the second.
However, the second seeds fought back in the super tiebreak to set up four match points, converting the first when Krejcikova hit a return long.
“It was our goal to qualify here,” Strycova said. “We are here and try to enjoy every moment. We have a big team, so we enjoy on and off the court as well. It’s great to be here and we are really appreciative.”
In the Red Group later yesterday, Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Latisha Chan fell to a 7-6 (7/5), 6-4 defeat to top seeds Elise Mertens and Aryna Sabalenka in 1 hour, 48 minutes.
The Belgian-Belarussian duo also defeated the Taiwanese sisters on grass in the round-of-16 at Wimbledon earlier this year.
The defeat left the Chan sisters — winners this year in Hobart, Australia; Doha; Eastbourne, England; and Osaka, Japan — rooted to the bottom of the group and on the verge of elimination ahead of their final group match tomorrow against Anna-Lena Groenefeld of Germany and Demi Schuurs of the Netherlands.
In the singles yesterday, defending champion Elina Svitolina stormed into the penultimate stage after a commanding straight-sets victory over Simona Halep.
The world No. 8 took advantage of an error-strewn Halep and prevailed 7-5, 6-3 in 1 hour, 39 minutes at the Shenzhen Bay Sports Centre.
Svitolina is the first player through to the semi-finals, having also beaten world No. 2 Karolina Pliskova in straight sets on Monday.
Halep still has a chance of qualifying, having overcome US Open champion Bianca Andreescu in a three-set thriller in her opening match.
Svitolina had the better of long baseline rallies against an uncharacteristically errant Halep, who finished with 38 unforced errors.
“It was an extremely physical match,” Svitolina said after the match.
“I played very solid. I’m very happy about that,” she added.
In the later Purple Group match, Andreescu retired in the second set after losing the first 6-3 to Pliskova.
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
LIKE FINE WINE: Thirty-eight-year-old Djokovic won his 101st title of his career in Athens, becoming the oldest tournament winner since Ken Roswell, 44, in 1977 Elena Rybakina on Saturday clinched her biggest title since Wimbledon in 2022, defeating world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka 6-3, 7-6 (7/0) at the WTA Finals in Riyadh. The world No. 6 put on yet another serving masterclass and was at her returning best as she became the first Kazakh and the first player representing an Asian country to lift the WTA Finals singles trophy. Having gone 3-0 in round-robin play, Rybakina earned a record US$5.235 million and would finish the year ranked No. 5 in the world. “It’s been an incredible week, I honestly didn’t expect any result, and to go so far,
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,
RSS