Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei and Elise Mertens of Belgium, the No. 2 seeds, yesterday beat third seeds Storm Hunter of Australia and Katerina Siniakova of Czech Republic to reach the final, meaning Hsieh is to play two finals in two days at the Australian Open.
Hsieh and Mertens won 7-5, 1-6, 6-3 to book their place in Sunday’s final. The other women’s doubles semi-final is to be played today, with New Zealand’s Erin Routliffe and Gabriela Dabrowski of Canada to play Latvia’s Jelena Ostapenko and Lyudmyla Kichenok of Ukraine.
Hsieh on Wednesday reached the final of the mixed doubles with partner Jan Zielinski of Poland and are to play second seeds Desirae Krawczyk of the US and Neal Skupski of Britain in today’s final.
Photo: AP
In the women’s singles, defending champion Aryna Sabalenka avenged her US Open final loss to Coco Gauff and became the first since Serena Williams to reach back-to-back women’s singles finals at the Australian Open.
Sabalenka attacked Gauff’s serve throughout her 7-6 (8/2), 6-4 semi-final win.
She faces Zheng Qinwen of China in tomorrow’s championship decider after Zheng beat Ukraine’s Dayana Yastremska 6-4, 6-4 in the second semi-final last night.
Photo: AFP
Sabalenka is on a 13-match roll at Melbourne Park, where she made her Grand Slam breakthrough last year. Williams reached consecutive finals there in 2016 and 2017.
In the men’s doubles, Indian player Rohan Bopanna and his Australian partner, Matthew Ebden, advanced to their second consecutive Grand Slam final.
Bopanna, 43, and 36-year-old Ebden beat Zhang Zhizhen of China and Tomas Machac of the Czech Republic 6-3, 3-6, 7-6 (9/7) in their semi-final on Rod Laver Arena.
Bopanna and Ebden, now ranked second in men’s doubles, lost to Rajeev Ram and Joe Salisbury in the US Open final in September last year.
Tournament officials yesterday said that Ebden and Bopanna, at combined ages of 79 years, would become the oldest No. 1 pairing in tennis history at the end of the tournament.
They were cruising at 4-1 up in the third set before Zhang and Machac forced a match tiebreaker.
“What an epic third set,” Ebden said. “I’ve just got to hand it to my partner. We’ve been fighting since round one; a lot of tough moments, fighting through one-by-one.”
In tomorrow’s final, Bopanna and Ebden are to play the Italian pair of Simone Bolelli and Andrea Vavassori, who beat Yannick Hanfmann and Dominik Koepfer of Germany 6-3, 3-6, 7-6 (7/5) in the second semi-final.
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