Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Chan Yung-jan face Red Group winners, top seeds and tournament favorites Martina Hingis and Sania Mirza in the semi-finals at the WTA Finals in Singapore at 12:30pm today after they finished second in the White Group with a 2-1 record.
The Swiss-Indian pairing defeated Timea Babos of Hungary and Kristina Mladenovic of France 6-4, 7-5 in 1 hour, 30 minutes yesterday to complete a clean sweep of their round-robin matches.
“We had played them twice before and we were 1-all, so we knew we had to come out and play well, like we’ve been trying to do every match here at the WTA Finals,” Mirza said in her courtside interview. “We just tried to come out and play our best, and that was enough to win today.”
Photo: AP
The victory extended the top seeds’ winning streak to 20 matches.
“It feels pretty good,” Hingis said. “Sania came up to me and asked me why don’t we try to play together, and at first we both had our partners, but as soon as we started we won a hat-trick right away at Indian Wells, Miami and Charleston. It was amazing how fast we clicked. It was a dream to come here to Singapore and hopefully we can keep winning here.”
The Chan sisters came second in the group due to having won a game fewer than Spanish duo Garbine Muguruza and Carla Suarez Navarro, despite having a higher win percentage.
The difference came down to the Spanish duo being taken to a 12th game in the first set of both of their victories, a 7-5, 6-4 win over the Chan sisters on Thursday and their 7-5, 6-2 win against Caroline Garcia and Katarina Srebotnik.
The Taiwanese duo followed up their opening 6-4, 7-6 (7/5) victory over Garcia and Srebotnik with a 6-2, 6-2 demolition of Bethanie Mattek-Sands and Lucie Safarova, which was not afforded the same status in a scoring system where the group placing is decided by the number of games won, rather than by the win percentage.
Should the Chan sisters have won that match 7-5, 7-5 they would have topped the table and avoided the top seeds in today’s semi-finals.
In a world in which sports are plagued by betting syndicates attempting to fix matches for financial gain, a scoring system which does not reward teams who play their best tennis to win matches in a fair and honest way, but penalizes a team for playing an exceptional match — such as the Chan sisters’ win over Mattek-Sands and Safarova — needs to be replaced.
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
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