The Chan sisters’ hopes of a French Open women’s doubles title evaporated on Sunday as both Hao-ching and Yung-jan were knocked out of the third round at Roland Garros.
Chan Hao-ching and Anabel Medina Garrigues fell to a 7-6 (7/5), 6-2 defeat to ninth-seeded Czech duo Andrea Hlavackova and Lucie Hradecka in a rain-hit match on Court Two.
The Taiwanese-Spanish pairing began the match brightly, breaking serve in the first game, but were struggling to hold their own serve in the second when the rain began to fall in Paris.
When the players returned, the three-hour delay seemed to affect Chan Hao-ching the most as the next three games also went against serve, the Taiwanese committed a double-fault twice as she lost her first service game to love.
After the tight first set went to a tiebreaker, the ninth seeds ran away with the second as the Nuremberg Versicherungscup winners crashed out of the season’s second Grand Slam.
The Taiwanese-Spanish duo saved four of nine break-point chances and converted three of five, but it was not enough as the Czech pairing won 87 of the 160 points contested.
The ninth seeds advanced to the quarter-finals to face either fourth seeds Hsieh Su-wei of Taiwan and Flavia Pennetta of Italy, or Janette Husarova of Slovakia and Paula Kania of Poland, who were due to play their third-round match late yesterday.
Chan Yung-jan and Zheng Jie of China, the 11th seeds, were shocked 4-6, 6-4, 7-6 (8/6) by Spanish duo Silvia Soler-Espinosa and Maria-Teresa Torro-Flor in a tight third-round encounter on Court Three.
The cross-strait pairing saved eight of 16 break-point chances and converted eight of 18, but it was not enough, as the Spaniards rallied from a set down to win 120 of the 233 points contested.
Chan Yung-jan still harbors hopes of a Grand Slam title in the mixed doubles with partner John Peers of Australia.
They were due to take on Zheng and Henri Kontinen of Finland in the quarter-finals late yesterday on Court Three.
INJURY TURMOIL: Despite stunning French Open champions Paolini and Errani to advance, Chan was forced to pull out after her partner’s tearful women’s singles defeat Last year’s mixed doubles champions Hsieh Su-wei of Taiwan and Poland’s Jan Zielinski on Monday crashed out of the quarter-finals at Wimbledon, leaving the Taiwanese star focused on pursuing a fifth women’s doubles title in London, while a partner injury forced compatriot Chan Hao-ching to give up on her doubles campaign. Hsieh and Zielinksi, who last year also won the Australia Open title, narrowly lost their opening set 7-6 (9/7), before Britain’s Joe Salisbury and Brazil’s Luisa Stefani stunned the former champions 6-3 at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club. The Taiwanese-Polish duo had been dominant in the first two
Real Madrid’s FIFA Club World Cup quarter-final against Borussia Dortmund had taken three crazy turns during nine minutes of second-half stoppage time when Marcel Sabitzer chested the ball and sent a right-footed volley toward Thibaut Courtois’ post. Courtois leapt to his right, extended the long arm on his 2m frame and just managed to get his gloved fingertips on the ball, knocking it down. Courtois hit the ground as the ball bounded up. He looked skyward, planted his right hand to regain his balance, grabbed the ball with both hands on the second bounce and fell onto it with his chest. Sabitzer turned
The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) has overturned French Olympic fencer Ysaora Thibus’ four-year suspension for doping, ruling that her positive test for a banned substance was caused by kissing her then-boyfriend, American fencer Race Imboden. Thibus, a silver medalist in team foil at the Tokyo Games, had tested positive for ostarine, a prohibited muscle-building substance, during a competition in Paris in January last year. However, CAS concluded there was no intentional wrongdoing, finding it scientifically plausible that repeated kissing over several days with Olympic medalist Imboden — who was taking ostarine at the time — led to accidental contamination. The court
‘SU-PENKO’: Hsieh and Ostapenko face a rematch against their Australian Open final opponents, the same duo Hsieh played in last year’s Wimbledon semi-finals Taiwanese women’s doubles star Hsieh Su-wei and Latvian partner Jelena Ostapenko on Wednesday survived a near upset to the unseeded duo of Sorana Cirstea of Romania and Russia’s Anna Kalinskaya, setting up a semi-final showdown against last year’s winners. Despite losing a hard-fought opening set 7-6 (7/4) on a tiebreak, the fourth seeds turned up the heat, losing just five games in the final two sets to handily put down Cirstea and Kalinskaya 6-3, 6-2. Nicknamed “Su-Penko,” the pair are next to face top seeds Katerina Siniakova of the Czech Republic and Taylor Townsend of the US in a reversal of last
RSS