Top seeds Hsieh Su-wei and Barbora Strycova on Saturday survived a minor scare at the Internazionali BNL d’Italia in Rome to advance to their fifth women’s doubles final of the season.
The Taiwanese-Czech duo were seemingly cruising in their semi-final against unseeded Hayley Carter and Luisa Stefani when they raced to a 5-0 lead in the opening set on the clay courts at the Foro Italico.
However, the American-Brazilian pairing then won five straight games — including saving two set points — to level at 5-5, before the favorites for the title won eight of the final nine points to clinch the set and go on to seal a 7-5, 6-4 victory in 1 hour, 31 minutes.
Photo: AFP
Hsieh and Strycova saved five of eight break points and converted five of nine, winning 48 percent of their first-return points to keep their bid for a fourth title of the season on track, after victories in Brisbane, Dubai and Qatar.
The only blemish on the Taiwanese-Czech duo’s record this season was at the Australian Open, where they fell to a 6-2, 6-1 defeat in the final to Timea Babos and Kristina Mladenovic.
The top seeds were due to face unseeded Anna-Lena Friedsam and Raluca Olaru in the final, after the German-Romanian pairing rallied to edge Japanese seventh seeds Shuko Aoyama and Ena Shibahara 3-6, 6-2, 10-4 in 1 hour, 26 minutes in the other semi-final.
In the women’s singles, Simona Halep remained on track for a first Rome title, advancing to the semi-finals after Kazakh rival Yulia Putintseva retired while trailing 6-2, 2-0.
Halep has twice finished runner-up in Rome in 2017 and 2018, and “really wants to win” the tournament.
“It’s one of the biggest goals now,” said Halep who is on a run of 12 consecutive victories after winning in Dubai in February and in Prague after the lockdown.
She will play Spaniard Garbine Muguruza, the ninth seed, for a place in the semi-finals after the Spaniard ousted US Open finalist Victoria Arazenka.
Defending champion Karolina Pliskova, the second seed, is to play fellow Czech Marketa Vondrousova, last year’s French Open runner-up.
In the men’s singles, clay court king Rafael Nadal crashed out of the tournament, falling to a straight sets defeat to Argentine Diego Schwartzman in a tournament the Spaniard had won nine times.
Eight-seeded Schwartzman meted out a punishing 6-2, 7-5 loss in Nadal’s final warm-up before his bid for a 13th French Open, and record-equaling 20th Grand Slam in just over a week.
Top men’s seed Novak Djokovic also stumbled on the Roman clay, but recovered to win through 6-3, 4-6, 6-3 against German qualifier Dominik Koepfer.
“It was not my night at all,” said Nadal, who had won all nine previous meetings against 28-year-old Schwartzman, but could not match his rival’s stunning game on the red clay of the Foro Italico.
“He played a great match, not me, when this happens you have to lose,” the 34-year-old added.
Schwartzman next plays Canadian 12th seed Denis Shapovalov for a place in the final.
Djokovic, meanwhile, let his frustrations spill over in a two-hour battle with his 97th-ranked German rival.
Two weeks after his US Open default for accidently hitting a line judge with a ball, the Serb struggled to contain his emotions, throwing his racket after a lost service game, with shouts of anger resounding in the silence of the empty Central Court.
“Well, let me tell you that it’s not the first nor the last racket that I’ll break in my career. I have done it before,” he said.
The 33-year-old next plays Norway’s Casper Ruud who also needed to fight to get past Italian fourth seed Matteo Berrettini 4-6, 6-3, 7-6 (7/5).
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