Top-ranked Ash Barty yesterday won the WTA Finals trophy, beating defending champion Elina Svitolina in straight sets, while Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei and Barbora Strycova won their semi-final in the doubles, but fell in the final yesterday to Timea Babos and Kristina Mladenovic.
Barty had not beaten Svitolina in five previous attempts, but she dominated yesterday, winning 6-4, 6-3 in 1 hour, 26 minutes at the Shenzhen Bay Sports Center.
The Australian claimed US$4.42 million — the biggest ever awarded in men’s or women’s tennis.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Barty, like Svitolina, dropped the opening set of her semi-final on Saturday before beating Karolina Pliskova 4-6, 6-2, 6-3.
Belinda Bencic retired in the third set as Svitolina outlasted the injured Swiss to win 5-7, 6-3, 4-1.
Babos and Mladenovic played a masterclass to defend their WTA Finals doubles title in a lopsided final. The world No. 3 pairing completed an unbeaten campaign with a 6-1, 6-3 rout in 64 minutes.
The French Open champions were the first team since 2008 to defend their crown. It was a third straight triumph for Babos, who won in 2017 when paired with Andrea Sestini-Hlavackova.
“We really stood up and believed in our mental strength,” Mladenovic said after the match.
The French-Hungarian pairing started red hot and captured two early breaks to run through a one-sided first set in just 24 minutes.
They gained a decisive break in the sixth game of the second set before completing a convincing victory over the Wimbledon champions.
Hsieh and Strycova reached the finals after steamrolling through their semi-final on Saturday, overwhelming eighth seeds Anna-Lena Groenefeld of Germany and Demi Schuurs of the Netherlands 6-1, 6-2 in under an hour.
Hsieh and Strycova broke Groenefeld and Schuurs in seven of eight service games, while only being broken twice themselves.
Taiwan’s Latisha Chan and Chan Hao-ching failed to get out of the group stage after losing all three of their round-robin matches.
Switzerland’s Bencic questioned the quality of the court at the event after she joined the list of players to pull out of the end-of-season championship on Saturday.
Bencic retired midway through the third set of her semi-final against Svitolina to become the fourth player to withdraw at this year’s tournament, which is being played on a temporary hard court at the indoor facility.
“I was cramping,” Bencic said. “I started to feel it at the start of the second set, my hamstring. I called the physio. I started cramping in my foot and again in my hamstring.”
“I really didn’t want to retire. I wanted to finish the match. It was not possible. I’m really disappointed about how my body failed me,” she said.
“I think these courts are really not ideal. You can see there were four retirements,” she said.
Taiwan won a back-and-forth match at the Unions Cup in Singapore yesterday, but the hosts claimed the trophy due to a better points differential over the tournament. Singapore’s players celebrated with the cup, despite losing a match in which they seized the lead three times, but ultimately fell to a 19-16 defeat. Their points advantage was due to their strong opening game against the other team in the competition, Thailand, who they beat 30-8 on Saturday last week. Taiwan narrowly lost to Thailand on Tuesday and went into yesterday’s match facing a steep challenge. They responded well, opening the game with sustained pressure
An “outstanding” 17-year-old Chinese badminton player died of cardiac arrest after collapsing on court during a tournament in Indonesia, officials said yesterday. Zhang Zhijie was playing a match late Sunday against Japan’s Kazuma Kawano at the Badminton Asia Junior Championships in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. The score was 11-11 in the first game when Zhang fell to the floor between points. The teenager received treatment at the venue and was rushed to hospital in an ambulance, but passed away later that night after repeated efforts to resuscitate him failed. “Medical conclusions ... indicated that the victim experienced sudden cardiac arrest,” Broto Happy, spokesman for
A buzz of excitement crackled through the hushed arena as the rider gripped the reins of her stuffed steed. Welcome to the strangely exacting world of hobby-horsing, the Finnish sport guaranteed to put a smile on your face. Immaculately coiffed equestrians leap athletically over fences just like in horse jumping, going as fast as they can against the clock straddling their stick steeds. Things are more stately in the dressage, with riders trotting their stick horses with intricately decorated stuffed heads before the discerning eyes of the judges. About 260 riders from 22 countries — most women and girls aged 10 to 20 —
Taiwan’s men’s national basketball team is set to upgrade its depth in the paint after signing Brandon Gilbeck of the P.League+’s Formosa Dreamers to a naturalized player’s contract. The 27-year-old big man from the US landed in Taoyuan early on Monday, where he was welcomed by Chinese Taipei Basketball Association deputy secretary-general Chang Cheng-chung. The two signed the deal, which still has to be approved by the Sports Administration and the Ministry of the Interior. Chang said he is confident that “the proceedings would go smoothly.” If approved, Gilbeck would become the third naturalized basketball player in Taiwan, following the New Taipei Kings’ Quincy