Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei (謝淑薇) and Jan Zielinski of Poland yesterday won a match tiebreaker to claim the Australian Open mixed doubles title with an nail-biting 6-7 (5/7), 6-4, 11-9 victory over Desirae Krawczyk of the US and Britain’s Neal Skupski.
The victory earned Hsieh her first mixed doubles Grand Slam title, and the 38-year-old is also in the running to win her seventh major women’s doubles trophy, having reached Sunday’s final with Elise Mertens of Belgium.
“It was a really tough match, but we made it,” Hsieh said. “Thank you so much for such a great match, it was really fun on court to play you guys.”
Photo: AP
“We didn’t have anyone to play mixed doubles with. We found each other on the looking list and it’s worked out pretty well,” Zielinski said. “Maybe we can keep it going.”
The match was a thrilling encounter of contrasting styles, with Krawczyk’s raw power coming up against Hsieh’s inventive shotmaking as the first set went down to the wire.
Krawczyk and Skupski broke to take a 4-3 lead, but faltered when serving out the set, allowing Hsieh and Zielinski to break back and level at 5-5. As the opener headed into a tiebreak, it was the British-American duo who held their nerve.
The second seeds broke again to take a 4-2 lead in the second set, but Hsieh and Zielinski roared back with two service breaks of their own to send the match into a 10-point match tiebreak.
Hsieh and Zielinski raced into a 4-0 lead in the decider, but the second seeds leveled at 7-7, with Skupski then bringing up a championship point at 9-8 with a second serve ace, but the British-American pair were unable to covert.
It was Hsieh and Zielinski who claimed the next three points, with Zielinski sealing a memorable victory in just under two hours with a blistering forehand.
Hsieh has won six women’s doubles Grand Slam titles — four at Wimbledon in 2013, 2019, 2021 and last year, and two at the French Open in 2014 and last year.
Her best result at the Australian Open was reaching the women’s doubles final in 2020 with Barbora Strycova of the Czech Republic.
Additional reporting by CNA
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary
THUGGISH BEHAVIOR: Encouraging people to report independence supporters is another intimidation tactic that threatens cross-strait peace, the state department said China setting up an online system for reporting “Taiwanese independence” advocates is an “irresponsible and reprehensible” act, a US government spokesperson said on Friday. “China’s call for private individuals to report on alleged ‘persecution or suppression’ by supposed ‘Taiwan independence henchmen and accomplices’ is irresponsible and reprehensible,” an unnamed US Department of State spokesperson told the Central News Agency in an e-mail. The move is part of Beijing’s “intimidation campaign” against Taiwan and its supporters, and is “threatening free speech around the world, destabilizing the Indo-Pacific region, and deliberately eroding the cross-strait status quo,” the spokesperson said. The Chinese Communist Party’s “threats
RSS