Taiwanese sisters Chan Hao-ching and Chan Yung-jan won their opening match at the season-ending BNP Paribas WTA Finals in Singapore yesterday.
The No. 3 seeds defeated fifth seeds Caroline Garcia of France and Katarina Srebotnik of Slovenia 6-4, 7-6 (7/5) in a hard-fought opening match in the White Group at the Singapore Indoor Stadium.
The Chan sisters saved five of eight break points and converted four of nine, winning 82 of the 155 points contested to complete the victory in 1 hour, 49 minutes.
Photo: Reuters
“Tough first round, but I guess it’s tough here every round,” Chan Yung-jan said on Facebook.
The Taiwanese duo’s five WTA Tour doubles titles makes them the second-most successful pair of sisters on the tour after Venus and Serena Williams, who have won 21 titles.
Next up at 1pm today the Chan sisters are due to face second seeds Bethanie Mattek-Sands of the US and Lucie Safarova of the Czech Republic, who won their first round-robin White Group match 6-3, 7-6 (7/1) against eighth-seeded Spanish pairing Garbine Muguruza and Carla Suarez Navarro.
“It felt great to be out there,” Mattek-Sands told the WTA Tour Web site after the duo’s opening match.
“We were excited to kick-start the championships here as the first match up. All of the teams are good here — it’s the top eight and it’s the best of the best, so we’re really happy with how we played,” the American said.
In the singles, fast-rising Muguruza beat Safarova in straight sets to prove she is a force to be reckoned with at the WTA Finals and avenge her defeat at Roland Garros.
Muguruza, the freshly anointed world No. 3 and the second seed in Singapore, overpowered the Czech in the first set and edged the second to take it 6-3, 7-6 (7/4).
The powerful Spaniard converted two break points in the first set and recovered from an early break of her own service in the second to get it back on serve at 3-3.
Safarova, the world No. 9, fought off four break points to make it 4-4 before the set went to a tiebreak — which Muguruza won 7/4 to wrap up the match in just under two hours.
Both players were Grand Slam runners-up this year to Serena Williams — Muguruza at Wimbledon and Safarova at Roland Garros, where she beat the Spaniard in straight sets in the quarter-finals.
“In Roland Garros she played an amazing match. I think today I played a very good match also,” Muguruza said.
“I just wanted so much to win. I was fighting and you know, just very concentrated,” she said.
Muguruza has risen up the rankings after reaching the Wuhan Open final and winning in Beijing this month, reaching a career high of third in the latest listings.
Muguruza and Safarova are in the White Group together with Angelique Kerber of Germany and Petra Kvitova of the Czech Republic.
Sixth seed Kerber defeated fourth seed Kvitova 6-2, 7-6 (7/3) in the late match last night.
Champagne corks often pop and loud, boisterous cheers are usually heard around Constitution Dock when the Sydney Hobart Yacht Race line honors winner finishes in the Tasmanian state capital. There were no such celebrations this year when the defending champions on board LawConnect won the race in the early hours of yesterday morning, as it came about 24 hours after two sailors died on separate boats in sail boom accidents two hours apart on a storm-ravaged first night of the race. LawConnect, a 100-foot super maxi skippered by Australian tech millionaire Christian Beck, sailed up the River Derwent at just after 2:30am.
‘BOWLINE’ AND ‘ARCTOS’: Roy Quaden was hit on the head by a boom, while Nick Smith was struck by the main sheet and thrown across the boat amid rough seas Two sailors have been killed in separate incidents in the treacherous Sydney Hobart Yacht Race, officials said yesterday, as a string of yachts retired in powerful winds and high seas. One of the crew members, 55-year-old Roy Quaden on Flying Fish Arctos, was hit on the head by a boom as the fleet raced down the New South Wales coast, race organizers said. The other man, 65-year-old Nick Smith, was struck by the main sheet aboard Bowline and thrown across the boat, said David Jacobs, vice commodore of the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia. “Unfortunately, he hit his head on the winch, and
Liverpool on Thursday powered seven points clear at the top of the Premier League as the title favorites survived a scare in their 3-1 win against Leicester City, while Bruno Fernandes was sent off in Manchester United’s dismal 2-0 defeat against Wolverhampton Wanderers. Erling Haaland missed a penalty as crisis-torn Manchester City failed to end their dismal run with a 1-1 draw against Everton, but it was United’s travails and Liverpool’s remarkable run that took center-stage. Arne Slot’s side were shocked by Jordan Ayew’s early strike at Anfield, but the leaders recovered their composure to equalize just before the interval through Cody
Elena Rybakina’s Kazakhstan yesterday dumped defending champions Germany out of the United Cup with world No. 2 Alexander Zverev sidelined by an arm injury barely a week away from the Australian Open. The upset in Perth sent the Kazakhs into the semi-finals of the 18-nation tournament. In Sydney, women’s world No. 2 Iga Swiatek led Poland into the last eight by winning a rematch of her 2023 French Open final against Karolina Muchova of the Czech Republic. Britain also progressed to the quarter-finals with Katie Boulter’s dominant 6-2, 6-1 victory over Australia’s Olivia Gadecki enough to guarantee they won their group. The US and
RSS