Taiwanese No. 1 Lu Yen-hsun crashed out of the Chennai Open quarter-finals yesterday, although he still has much to play for in India after success in the doubles on Thursday.
World No. 15 Roberto Bautista Agut of Spain proved too strong for world No. 38 Lu, defeating the Taiwanese veteran 7-6 (9/7), 6-4 in 1 hour, 48 minutes in the main stadium last night.
It was Lu’s second career defeat to the Spaniard after Bautista Agut downed the Taiwanese 6-4, 6-2 in their only other meeting in St Petersburg, Russia, in 2012.
Photo courtesy of Lu Yen-hsun
Yesterday’s match was a much closer affair, with Lu breaking his opponent first in the seventh game, the sixth seed taking 4-3 lead and then producing an ace to hold his next service game.
Lu served for the set at 5-4 and had a set point at 40-30, but the third-seeded Spaniard clung on to break back and level at 5-5, before both players held serve to set up the tiebreaker.
Lu had another chance to claim the set at 6-5 in the tiebreaker, but the Spaniard rallied once again, eventually claiming a 9-7 victory.
Bautista Agut then broke Lu in the third game of the second set when Lu double-faulted on a break-point opportunity and the Spaniard held his service games to complete the victory and set up a semi-final against Slovenian qualifier Aljaz Bedene, who rallied from a set down to stun fifth seed Guillermo Garcia-Lopez of Spain 2-6, 6-3, 6-2 in the other early evening quarter-final on Court 1.
In the doubles on Thursday, Lu and England’s Jonathan Marray upset second seeds Andre Begemann of Germany and Robin Haase of the Netherlands to book a spot in the semi-finals today.
The Taiwanese-English duo rallied from a set down, helped by their opponents serving seven double faults, to record a 3-6, 7-6 (7/2), 10-6 victory in 1 hour, 22 minutes.
Lu and Marray saved three of five break-point chances and converted just one of six, but it was enough to set up a semi-final against India’s Purav Raja and Adil Shamasdin of Canada, who were 7-6 (7/5), 4-6, 10-4 winners over Bautista Agut and Stanislas Wawrinka of Switzerland in their quarter-final.
On the WTA Tour yesterday, Hsieh Su-wei’s bid for a first title of the season with new partner Sania Mirza at the Brisbane International in Australia was thwarted by fourth seeds Caroline Garcia of France and Katarina Srebotnik of Slovenia.
The duo crashed out after their opponents fought back from a set down to record a 4-6, 7-6 (7/1), 10-8 victory in the super tiebreak in 1 hour, 37 minutes.
Top-seeded Hsieh and Mirza saved 10 of 13 break-point chances and converted four of five, but it was not enough as they exited the warm-up tournament for the Australian Open in the semi-finals.
Garcia and Srebotnik are to play former world No. 1 Martina Hingis and Sabine Lisicki in today’s final after the Swiss-German duo defeated Michaella Krajicek of the Netherlands and Karolina Pliskova of the Czech Republic 7-6 (7/3), 6-3 in yesterday’s other semi-final.
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