Chan Yung-jan cranked up her impressive form another notch when she crushed Jessica Moore yesterday at the Taipei Ladies Open.
Chan, 19, won 6-0, 6-0 against the Australian No. 3, the US$100,000 tournament’s seventh seed. The Taiwanese No. 1 seems to be getting stronger with every match, having lost only three games in dispatching Yuka Kuroda in round one and only two when beating Tomoyo Takagishi on Thursday.
It all bodes well for today’s semi-final clash with Italy’s Corinna Dentoni who won a grueling three-setter against Kimiko Date-Krumm.
PHOTO: CHU PEI-HSIUNG, TAIPEI TIMES
The veteran Japanese took the first set 7-5 and had two match points on Dentoni’s serve at 5-2 up in the second. She failed to take them but still served for the match in the next game. It went to deuce but a forehand pass won Dentoni the break to make it 4-5. Dentoni broke again two games later to set up an all-or-nothing final set.
Once again it was tight, going to a deciding tie-break but the 19-year-old hung on against an opponent 18-years her senior to take the match 5-7, 7-5, 7-6 (4).
Chan should start today’s semi-final as favorite, not only because of her No. 1 seeding and form so far this week but because of the marathon effort Dentoni required to defeat Date-Krumm.
In yesterday’s other quarter-finals Jarmila Gajdosova beat Chang Kai-chen 6-2, 7-6 (7) while Kumiko Iijima defeated Noppawan Lertcheewakarn 6-1, 6-3.
Despite her defeat, Chang, the No. 4 ranked player in Taiwan, can take consolation from an impressive run at the Taipei Arena this week, including the defeat of US Fed Cup player Vania King.
Gajdosova could well be Chan’s biggest threat for the title. The Slovakian has yet to drop a set in the tournament and despite her current lowly ranking of 178, as recently as 2006 she was No. 68 in the world.
Doping fears prevented former US Open champion Emma Raducanu from treating insect bites on the eve of the Australian Open, she said, with players increasingly wary about ingesting contaminated substances. The British player was speaking in the wake of high-profile doping cases involving Iga Swiatak and Jannik Sinner. “I would say all of us are probably quite sensitive to what we take on board, what we use,” the 22-year-old said, recalling an incident on Friday. “I got really badly bitten by, I don’t know what, like ants, mosquitoes, something. I’m allergic, I guess,” she added. The bites “flared up and swelled up really a
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