Taiwan’s top tennis players yesterday were unable to overcome a 2-0 deficit to survive their Davis Cup qualifier against France in Taipei.
France dominated Taiwan in the first two days of the Davis Cup, adding two more victories yesterday for a 4-0 win over Taiwan to book their place in the group stages.
France secured their passage when Nicolas Mahut and Edouard Roger-Vasselin came back from a set down to beat Hsu Yu-hsiou and Jason Jung 3-6, 6-2, 7-6 (7/1).
Photo: Lin Cheng-kun, Taipei Times
“We were perhaps a little timid at the start,” Roger-Vasselin said. “We stayed calm. We knew our level of play was going to change. We had to keep our nerve.”
Quentin Halys rounded off the French victory with a 6-3, 7-6 (7/3) win over World No. 305 Chun Hsin-tseng.
On Saturday, World No. 230 Hsu, Taiwan’s top player in the men’s singles category, lost 6-4, 6-4 to 19-year-old world No. 68 Luca Van Assche.
“[I] had prepped to win, but the results were not all that satisfactory,” Hsu said in a post-game interview, adding that he and his team had set up offensive strategies that did not pay off.
“The match technically concluded how I expected it would,” he added. “But I think it could have gone better.”
However, Hsu said the match was a learning experience, as he was able to observe how one of the world’s top 100 players reacted during critical moments.
Also on Saturday, world No. 238 Wu Tung-lin lost to world No. 17 Adrian Mannarino 6-3, 7-5.
Prior to the matches, all available tickets to the Taipei Tennis Center were sold out.
Hsu said that being cheered on by almost 3,000 fans at the center left quite an impression on him.
“It is great that so many supporters came to cheer for me and Taiwan,” he said. “I have had experiences with big crowds at competitions, but they were not all supporting me. I really enjoyed playing like that.”
Yesterday, India eased past Pakistan 4-0 in their World Group I play-off tie, while on Saturday, Serbia, without Novak Djokovic, proved no match for Slovakia who surged into the group stage of the Davis Cup for the first time, with Germany and Finland among five other countries qualifying.
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
RSS