The Chan sisters on Sunday claimed their second doubles title of the season at the typhoon-affected Hong Kong Open, while Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova came from behind to win a marathon singles final 5-7, 6-3, 7-6 (7/3) against Daria Gavrilova in the early hours of yesterday morning.
Top seeds and reigning champions Chan Hao-ching and Chan Yung-jan took just 47 minutes to complete a 6-1, 6-1 victory over Chinese duo Lu Jiajing and Wang Qiang at the Victoria Park Tennis Stadium.
The Taiwanese sisters saved the only break point they faced and converted five of eight, winning 51 of the 78 points contested to add the Hong Kong title to the Taiwan Open title they won at the Taipei Arena in February.
Photo: screen grab from Facebook
It was world No. 2 Chan Yung-jan’s 11th doubles title of the season after the Taiwanese and Swiss world No. 1 Martina Hingis claimed the titles in Eastbourne, Mallorca, Rome, Madrid, Indian Wells, Cincinnati, the US Open, Wuhan and Beijing, taking her prize money for the season to just short of US$1.4 million.
Earlier on Sunday, Typhoon Khanun, packing winds of 155kph and heavy rain, had virtually shut down the territory, delaying the final which had originally been scheduled for a 2pm start.
The weather finally relented just after 7pm and typhoon warning signals were lowered across Hong Kong, but an initial attempt to start the final at 8:30pm was aborted when the rain returned.
The final eventually started at about 9:20pm.
In the singles, it was three minutes past 1am yesterday morning when sixth seed Pavlyuchenkova converted the third of her match points.
It enabled the world No. 21 to edge over the winning line after 3 hours, 11 minutes of attritional tennis against her Australian opponent punctuated by frequent rain delays.
Almost an hour earlier the Russian had spurned two championship points at 5-4 on her own serve, only to see another heavy shower send the players scurrying for cover, and Pavlyuchenkova only had herself to blame for not getting the job done earlier after racing into a 3-0 lead when the match eventually began after a near five-hour delay.
She failed to serve out for the first set at 5-3 after being in control almost throughout and saw gritty world No. 22 Gavrilova steal in 7-5 on the back of a run of three unanswered games.
“I’m just happy to finally finish this match in brutal conditions,” Pavlyuchenkova said after being presented with the trophy.
The second set was almost a carbon copy of the first, but this time the Russian managed to hold her nerve at 5-3 and took it to a decider against the seventh seed.
Both players had chances in the third set, but they remained deadlocked as tiredness set in and the clock ticked past midnight
Pavlyuchenkova then broke for 5-4, but once again failed to close out on her own serve.
After a 40-minute final rain delay the pair broke each other’s serve yet again and the match headed for the deciding tiebreak.
Bayer 04 Leverkusen go into today’s match at TSG 1899 Hoffenheim stung from their first league defeat in 16 months. Leverkusen were beaten 3-2 at home by RB Leipzig before the international break, the first loss since May last year for the reigning league and cup champions. While any defeat, particularly against a likely title rival, would have disappointed coach Xabi Alonso, the way in which it happened would be most concerning. Just as they did in the Supercup against VfB Stuttgart and in the league opener to Borussia Moenchengladbach, Leverkusen scored first, but were pegged back. However, while Leverkusen rallied late to
If all goes well when the biggest marathon field ever gathered in Australia races 42km through the streets of Sydney on Sunday, World Marathon Majors (WMM) will soon add a seventh race to the elite series. The Sydney Marathon is to become the first race since Tokyo in 2013 to join long-established majors in New York, London, Boston, Berlin and Chicago if it passes the WMM assessment criteria for the second straight year. “We’re really excited for Sunday to arrive,” race director Wayne Larden told a news conference in Sydney yesterday. “We’re prepared, we’re ready. All of our plans look good on
The lights dimmed and the crowd hushed as Karoline Kristensen entered for her performance. However, this was no ordinary Dutch theater: The temperature was 80°C and the audience naked apart from a towel. Dressed in a swimsuit and to the tune of emotional music, the 21-year-old Kristensen started her routine, performed inside a large sauna, with a bed of hot rocks in the middle. For a week this month, a group of wellness practitioners, called “sauna masters,” are gathering at a picturesque health resort in the Netherlands to compete in this year’s Aufguss world sauna championships. The practice takes its name from a
When details from a scientific experiment that could have helped clear Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva landed at the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the leader of the organization’s reaction was unequivocal: “We have to stop that urgently,” he wrote. No mention of the test ever became public and Valieva’s defense at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) went on without it. What effect the information could have had on Valieva’s case is unclear, but without it, the skater, then 15 years old, was eventually disqualified from the 2022 Winter Olympics after testing positive for a banned heart medication that would later