Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei and Belgian partner Elise Mertens on Monday notched up their first win in the doubles group stage of the WTA Finals in Riyadh to keep their semi-final hopes alive, while Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russian partner Veronika Kudermetova were aiming to record their first victory after press time last night.
Third seeds Hsieh and Mertens came back from a disheartening opening-day loss to Australia’s Ellen Perez and Nicole Melichar-Martinez to defeat top seeds Ukraine’s Lyudmyla Kichenok and Latvia’s Jelena Ostapenko, the women’s doubles world No. 3 and 4 respectively.
The 6-1, 6-3 victory at King Saud University Indoor Arena kept Hsieh and Mertens’ hopes of making the semi-finals alive, but to advance as Green Group winners, they today have to beat the Czech Republic’s Katerina Siniakova and Taylor Townsend of the US, who with two wins under their belt would move on no matter the result.
Photo: AFP
Hsieh, who is making her fourth Finals appearance, earlier this year won the Australian Open women’s doubles title with Mertens and the mixed doubles title with Poland’s Jan Zielinski. The No. 6 doubles star last year came back from an 18-month hiatus to win three women’s doubles Grand Slam titles with three different partners.
She and Mertens, who also won Wimbledon together in 2021, helped earned their spot in this year’s Finals with victories at the BNP Paribas Open and the Rothesay Classic.
The Finals features the top eight players or pairs from the calendar year, with both categories separated into two groups. The top two finishers from each advances to the semi-finals.
Photo: AFP
In the White Group, seventh seeds Chan and Kudermetova were last night to play fifth seeds Caroline Dolehide and Desirae Krawczyk of the US.
Chan, making her third appearance in the Finals and her first since 2019, and Kudermetova on Sunday lost 7-6 (7/6), 6-4 to Canada’s Gabriela Dabrowski and New Zealand’s Erin Routliffe.
Meanwhile, Aryna Sabalenka on Monday secured qualification for the singles semi-finals stage with a 6-3, 7-5 victory over Jasmine Paolini, as Zheng Qinwen ended Elena Rybakina’s chances of moving on.
With two round-robin wins in as many matches this week in Saudi Arabia, Sabalenka guaranteed herself passage to the final four as the winner of the Purple Group.
The Belarusian top seed is also just one victory away from locking down the year-end No. 1 ranking, which she is in a direct battle for with Iga Swiatek.
Earlier, Zheng improved her chances of advancing with a 7-6 (7/4), 3-6, 6-1 victory over world No. 5 Rybakina.
Zheng apologized to the crowd during her on-court interview for yelling: “Don’t shout more” at some of her supporters at a crucial moment in the final set.
She thanked them for their support and later acknowledged she could have handled the moment better.
“I felt today in such an important moment, when they shout so hard my name, my heart rate goes up. So I hold and hold, until one moment I can’t hold more,” Zheng said during her post-match news conference. “After I’m feeling a bit bad because if I can control my emotions a bit better, I was supposed not to say that to my crowd.”
South Korean giants T1, led by “Faker,” won their fifth League of Legends (LoL) world championship crown in London on Saturday, beating China’s Bilibili Gaming (BLG) in a thrilling final. The teams were locked at 2-2 at a packed O2 arena, but T1 clinched game five to make it back-to-back titles after nearly four hours of tense action. China’s BLG started strongly, taking the first game before T1 struck back to level. The Chinese team pulled ahead again at 2-1 only for their opponents to hit back again and go on to take the decider. Faker, who won the Most
Amber Glenn overcame a fall and her own doubts to win a maiden Grand Prix figure skating title on Saturday at the Grand Prix de France. The American skater had the lead from Friday’s short program. That and the support of the crowd got her through a tough free skate in which she fell on a triple flip and put a hand onto the ice to steady herself on two other jumps. “I didn’t feel that great out there today, but I really tried, and the audience really got me through that last half when I was doubting myself,” Glenn
The Major League Baseball World Series trophy is headed to Los Angeles, but the party is extending all the way to Japan. People milled around local train stations yesterday morning in Tokyo as newspaper extras were ready to roll off the presses, proclaiming Japanese stars Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto as world champions along with their Dodgers teammates after a stirring Game 5 victory over the New York Yankees. The 30-year-old is a national hero in Japan whose face adorns billboards and TV adverts all over the country. Ohtani this year became the first player in history to hit 50 home runs and
WORLD SERIES: ‘The individuals that were involved in that last night was a very small segment of the east Los Angeles community,’ the Los Angeles county sheriff said Rowdy crowds took to the streets of Los Angeles after the LA Dodgers won the Major League Baseball (MLB) World Series, setting a city bus on fire, breaking into stores and lighting fireworks. A dozen arrests were reported by police on Thursday, but officials said that most fans celebrated peacefully. Video showed revelers throwing objects at police in downtown LA as sirens blared and officers told them to leave the area on Wednesday night after the Dodgers defeated the New York Yankees in Game 5 of the MLB World Series at Giants Stadium in New York. Another video showed someone standing atop
RSS