Taiwan’s Lu Yen-hsun and Hsieh Su-wei each entered the third round of their respective doubles competitions at the US Open on Saturday, beating past Grand Slam winners.
Fourth seeds Hsieh and Peng Shuai of China beat the the non-seeded duo Svetlana Kuznetsova of Russia and Australia’s Samantha Stosur 7-5, 4-6, 6-3 in a game that lasted 2 hours, 7 minutes.
Hsieh and Peng are the winners of this year’s Wimbledon women’s doubles title, while Kuznetsova and Stosur won the women’s singles titles at the US Open in 2004 and 2011 respectively, and have won Grand Slam doubles tournaments paired with different players.
Photo: CNA
After Saturday’s match, Hsieh, 27, said she felt as if she was actually playing a singles game because her competitors’ shots were coming so fast, but she said she is familiar with Kuznetsova’s style of play as they had teamed up in the doubles when they were in their teens.
Hsieh and Peng next meet the 15th seeds Jelena Jankovic of Serbia and Croatia’s Mirjana Lucic-Baroni in the third round.
Meanwhile, Lu, who teamed up with India’s Divij Sharan, advanced to the third round of the men’s doubles for the second time after beating the Israeli duo of Jonathan Erlich and Andy Ram 6-4, 5-7, 7-6 (7-2).
It is the first time since 2009 that Lu, 30, has reached the third round of the tournament.
Lu said he and his 27-year-old partner stumbled a bit in the match against the men’s doubles winners of the 2008 Australian Open when they lost the second set, despite an initial 4-1 lead.
“Both of us were giving great performances in the second set before the score was 4-1,” he said.
Unseeded Lu and Sharan next face the fifth-seeded pair of Aisam-ul-Haq Qureshi of Pakistan and Jean-Julien Rojer of the Netherlands.
The other Taiwanese player still in the tournament — 19-year-old Chan Hao-ching, who is partnered with Germany’s Martin Emmrich in the mixed doubles — was scheduled to play against sixth seeds Lisa Raymond of the US and Rojer in a second-round match yesterday.
However, Chan’s sister, 24-year-old Chan Yung-jan, exited the tournament when she and Sweden’s Robert Lindstedt lost their second-round match to seventh seeds Andrea Hlavackova of the Czech Republic and Max Mirnyi of Belarus 6-3, 6-4 on Saturday.
“No matter how I do at this US Open, I’ll enjoy all of it,” said Chan Yung-jan, who has just returned to competition after taking six months off because of health issues.
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