Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei (謝淑薇) on Saturday won her third Wimbledon women’s doubles title when she and Belgian partner Elise Mertens defeated Russia’s Elena Vesnina and Veronika Kudermetova.
“It’s not always easy to play in the final, and the opponent will fight super hard,” Hsieh said ahead of the match. “We all know it’s the last match so we will fight until the last point definitely.”
Her determination paid off for the third-seeded pair, who were competing in their fifth tournament together. They saved two match points in the second set to win 3-6, 7-5, 9-7.
Photo: Reuters
Unseeded Kudermetova and Vesnina had two match points at 5-4 in the second set, the second one producing an incredible rally that Hsieh eventually won with a volley.
As the third set dragged on, 35-year-old Hsieh finished off a gripping contest with a backhand winner.
Hsieh and Mertens clinched a back-and-forth third set when Hsieh hit a backhand winner to break Vesnina’s serve.
Photo: AFP
“Some of her volleys, I can’t do. She’s a magician,” Mertens, the world’s No. 1 doubles player, said of Hsieh.
“That felt like seven hours,” Mertens said of the two-and-a-half-hour battle on a packed Centre Court. “There were nerves, but we managed it well in the end... We are very happy that we could close it out.”
“It was such a tough match,” Mertens added. “We just kept going... We never gave up. That’s the fighting spirit we had today that maybe made with the difference.’’
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday sent a message to congratulate Hsieh on her achievement.
She said on Twitter that Hsieh’s victory at Wimbledon would inspire the next generation of tennis players in Taiwan and around the world.
The Sports Administration also offered its congratulations and promised to continue to support tennis players as they work to achieve a higher global ranking.
Hsieh won her previous Wimbledon doubles titles with different partners. It was a first for Mertens, who has also won the Australian Open and US Open doubles.
Hsieh won the 2013 Wimbledon title with China’s Peng Shuai and the 2019 trophy alongside Barbora Strycova of the Czech Republic.
Additional reporting by Shelley Shan
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest foundry service provider, yesterday said that global semiconductor revenue is projected to hit US$1.5 trillion in 2030, after the figure exceeds US$1 trillion this year, as artificial intelligence (AI) demand boosts consumption of token and compute power. “We are still at the beginning of the AI revolution, but we already see a significant impact across the whole semiconductor ecosystem,” TSMC deputy cochief operating officer Kevin Zhang (張曉強) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “It is fair to say that in the past decade, smartphones and other mobile devices were
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS