Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei and Chinese partner Peng Shuai reached the quarter-finals of the US Open women’s doubles on Tuesday, overcoming a bumpy start to continue their good form at Grand Slam events.
The fourth-seeded Hsieh and Peng, who won the Wimbledon doubles title earlier this year, upended Serbian Jelena Jankovic and Croatian Mirjana Lucic-Baroni 6-4, 6-2 in 71 minutes to book their spot in the final eight.
The 15th-seeded Serb-Croat duo seemed determined to avenge their quarter-final loss to Hsieh and Peng at Wimbledon, surging to a 4-1 lead to open the match.
Photo: AFP
However, Hsieh and Peng quickly recovered breaking serve in the sixth game and running off the final five games of the set.
“At the beginning of the match we were both a little nervous,” Hsieh said. “There were some shots that we didn’t play very well, but after we finally got a chance to break our opponents’ serve, we got some momentum and went on to win the match.”
The duo were more dominant in the second set, winning 84 percent of the points in their four service games while breaking their opponents twice.
“I’m very happy because of how well we’ve done so far and also because the victory was a big step forward in getting us into the WTA year-end doubles event in Istanbul,” the 27-year-old Taiwanese said.
In the quarter-finals, Hsieh and Peng will face the formidable 10th-seeded Chinese-Indian duo Zheng Jie and Sania Mirza, who swept aside the sixth-seeded Anna-Lena Groenefeld of Germany and Kveta Peschke of the Czech Republic 6-2, 6-3 in their round-of-16 match.
Hsieh, who has teamed up with both Zheng and Mirza in the past, acknowledged the challenge her former partners would pose.
“They will not be easy opponents for us, but my partner and I will do our best,” she said.
Hsieh and Peng have clinched three doubles titles so far this year: at the Italian Open in Rome in May, Wimbledon in July and the Western and Southern Open in Cincinnati last month.
Meanwhile, Kristina Mladenovic of France and Daniel Nestor of Canada beat Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and German partner Martin Emmrich 7-6 (7/5), 6-3 in the mixed doubles quarter-finals.
“We had a chance to win if Emmrich had not sprained his ankle,” Chan said.
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