with AFP, EASTBOURNE, England
Taiwanese veteran player Hsieh Su-wei on Wednesday earned a walkover into the Eastbourne Open women’s doubles semi-finals in England, while her teenaged partner toppled another star this week, beating Emma Raducanu.
Four-time Wimbledon women’s doubles champion Hsieh and 19-year-old Maya Joint of Australia on Tuesday advanced to the quarter-finals after easing past Japan’s Shuko Aoyama and Poland’s Katarzyna Piter 6-3, 6-3 in 58 minutes on the grass court, seen as a warm-up for the Wimbledon Championships.
Photo: Reuters
They were next to play Barbora Krejcikova of the Czech Republic and Latvia’s Jelena Ostapenko, but they gave their opponents a walkover, after former French Open singles champion Ostapenko sustained an injury.
In her women’s singles round-of-16 match against 20-year-old Filipina qualifier Alexandra Eala, Ostapenko pulled out due to a foot injury with Eala up 0-6, 6-2, 3-2.
The injury comes as the Latvian is next week to join Hsieh as fourth seeds in women’s doubles at Wimbledon. The pair in January fought through to the finals at the Australian Open.
Photo: AFP
Wimbledon women’s singles champion Krejcikova advanced to the women’s quarter-finals, but yesterday dropped out due to a thigh injury.
Hsieh and Joint are today to face Mexico’s Giuliana Olmos and Renata Zarazua, who advanced with a 7-6 (7/5), 6-4 victory over Magali Kempen of Belgium and Tang Qinghui of China.
Another Taiwanese aiming for Wimbledon is British-Taiwanese player Joanna Garland, who on Wednesday defeated Slovak Renata Jamrichova 7-5, 6-1 in the second round of women’s singles qualifying for Wimbledon.
World No. 144 Garland, who made a notable run through qualifying to the main draw of the French Open last month, was yesterday after press time to play world No. 114 Nina Stojanovic.
Meanwhile, Hsieh’s Australian partner recorded a major upset in the women’s singles at Eastbourne, ousting British favorite and seventh seed Raducanu.
While Raducanu had hoped for a morale-boosting run on grass at Eastbourne ahead of Wimbldeon, Joint repeated her giant-toppling skills, beating the No. 38 Briton 4-6, 6-1, 7-6 (7/4).
Joint on Monday knocked out two-time Wimbledon runner-up Ons Jabeur in the first round, and added Raducanu, who won the US Open in 2021, as her second high-profile victim.
Joint faces world No. 69 Anna Blinkova in the quarter-finals.
“Today was really tough; there were a lot of ups and downs and momentum switches. I was really glad I could tough it out in the end. The atmosphere was amazing,” the world No. 51 Joint said after the second grass-court singles win of her career.
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