Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei and Elise Mertens of Belgium, the No. 2 seeds, yesterday beat third seeds Storm Hunter of Australia and Katerina Siniakova of Czech Republic to reach the final, meaning Hsieh is to play two finals in two days at the Australian Open.
Hsieh and Mertens won 7-5, 1-6, 6-3 to book their place in Sunday’s final. The other women’s doubles semi-final is to be played today, with New Zealand’s Erin Routliffe and Gabriela Dabrowski of Canada to play Latvia’s Jelena Ostapenko and Lyudmyla Kichenok of Ukraine.
Hsieh on Wednesday reached the final of the mixed doubles with partner Jan Zielinski of Poland and are to play second seeds Desirae Krawczyk of the US and Neal Skupski of Britain in today’s final.
Photo: AP
In the women’s singles, defending champion Aryna Sabalenka avenged her US Open final loss to Coco Gauff and became the first since Serena Williams to reach back-to-back women’s singles finals at the Australian Open.
Sabalenka attacked Gauff’s serve throughout her 7-6 (8/2), 6-4 semi-final win.
She faces Zheng Qinwen of China in tomorrow’s championship decider after Zheng beat Ukraine’s Dayana Yastremska 6-4, 6-4 in the second semi-final last night.
Photo: AFP
Sabalenka is on a 13-match roll at Melbourne Park, where she made her Grand Slam breakthrough last year. Williams reached consecutive finals there in 2016 and 2017.
In the men’s doubles, Indian player Rohan Bopanna and his Australian partner, Matthew Ebden, advanced to their second consecutive Grand Slam final.
Bopanna, 43, and 36-year-old Ebden beat Zhang Zhizhen of China and Tomas Machac of the Czech Republic 6-3, 3-6, 7-6 (9/7) in their semi-final on Rod Laver Arena.
Bopanna and Ebden, now ranked second in men’s doubles, lost to Rajeev Ram and Joe Salisbury in the US Open final in September last year.
Tournament officials yesterday said that Ebden and Bopanna, at combined ages of 79 years, would become the oldest No. 1 pairing in tennis history at the end of the tournament.
They were cruising at 4-1 up in the third set before Zhang and Machac forced a match tiebreaker.
“What an epic third set,” Ebden said. “I’ve just got to hand it to my partner. We’ve been fighting since round one; a lot of tough moments, fighting through one-by-one.”
In tomorrow’s final, Bopanna and Ebden are to play the Italian pair of Simone Bolelli and Andrea Vavassori, who beat Yannick Hanfmann and Dominik Koepfer of Germany 6-3, 3-6, 7-6 (7/5) in the second semi-final.
The qualifying round of the World Baseball Classic (WBC) is to be held at the Taipei Dome between Feb. 21 and 25, Major League Baseball (MLB) announced today. Taiwan’s group also includes Spain, Nicaragua and South Africa, with two of the four teams advancing onto the 2026 WBC. Taiwan, currently ranked second in the world in the World Baseball Softball Confederation rankings, are favorites to come out of the group, the MLB said in an article announcing the matchups. Last year, Taiwan finished in a five-way tie in their group with two wins and two losses, but finished last on tiebreakers after giving
North Korea’s FIFA Under-17 Women’s World Cup-winning team on Saturday received a heroes’ welcome back in the capital, Pyongyang, with hundreds of people on the streets to celebrate their success. They had defeated Spain on penalties after a 1-1 draw in the U17 World Cup final in the Dominican Republic on Nov. 3. It was the second global title in two months for secretive North Korea — largely closed off to the outside world; they also lifted the FIFA U20 Women’s World Cup in September. Officials and players’ families gathered at Pyongyang International Airport to wave flowers and North Korea flags as the
For King Faisal, a 20-year-old winger from Ghana, the invitation to move to Brazil to play soccer “was a dream.” “I believed when I came here, it would help me change the life of my family and many other people,” he said in Sao Paulo. For the past year and a half, he has been playing on the under-20s squad for Sao Paulo FC, one of South America’s most prominent clubs. He and a small number of other Africans are tearing across pitches in a country known as the biggest producer and exporter of soccer stars in the world, from Pele to Neymar. For
Coco Gauff of the US on Friday defeated top-ranked Aryna Sabalenka 7-6 (7/4), 6-3 to set up a showdown with Olympic champion Zheng Qinwen in the final of the WTA Finals, while in the doubles, Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching was eliminated. Gauff generated six break points to Belarusian Sabalenka’s four and built on early momentum in the opening set’s tiebreak that she carried through to the second set. She is the youngest player at 20 to make the final at the WTA Finals since Denmark’s Caroline Wozniacki in 2010. Zheng earlier defeated Wimbledon champion Barbora Krejcikova of the Czech Republic 6-3, 7-5 to book
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