Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei and partner Zhang Shuai of China on Tuesday survived Ellen Perez of Australia and Jelena Ostapenko of Latvia to advance to the women’s doubles semi-finals at the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, California.
The fifth-seeded Taiwanese-Chinese pairing struggled early against fourth seeds Perez and Ostapenko, trailing 3-5 when the match hit a set point in favor of the Australian and Hsieh’s frequent doubles partner Ostapenko.
However, Hsieh and Zhang found their footing to stage a comeback and take the set 7-5.
Photo: Jayne Kamin-Oncea-Imagn Images / USA Today
The duo kept up their strong play in the second set, besting their opponents 6-4 to come out victorious in 1 hour, 23 minutes.
At the start of the season, Hsieh partnered with Ostapenko at the Australian Open and the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships, finishing as runners-up in the finals of both competitions.
Hsieh and Zhang would next face the UK’s Olivia Nicholls and Slovak Tereza Mihalikova in the semi-finals.
Meanwhile, defending champion Iga Swiatek powered into the Indian Wells quarter-finals with a 6-1, 6-1 victory over Karolina Muchova, beating the rain that played havoc with many of the day’s matches.
The world No. 2 from Poland needed just 57 minutes to put away Muchova, who took her to three sets in the 2023 French Open final.
Swiatek, the winner in 2022 and last year, did not face a break point as she continued her bid to become the first woman to win three titles in the California desert.
Off-and-on showers caused multiple delays, the longest lasting more than three hours.
Ukraine’s Elina Svitolina, ranked 23rd, shrugged off the long wait at the start of the third set to upset world No. 4 Jessica Pegula of the US 5-7, 6-1, 6-2.
The win over the American was a welcome victory for her beleaguered home country.
“I feel like I need to play well,” the 30-year-old said. “I feel like it’s something that I try to do for my country — you know, to see my flag raising and to see the tick with the win from my country.”
However, despite mounting tensions between Kyiv and Washington after US President Donald Trump feuded publicly with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and the White House froze military aid to Ukraine, Svitolina said she had received an outpouring of support from American friends and fans.
She offered her thanks in a social media post, and said since the Feb. 28 falling out between Trump and Zelenskiy, the support had increased.
“I feel like since that meeting in the Oval Office, I got a lot of messages of support from the American people and also, you know, a lot of people here when I arrived at the tournament, just giving the love and support to Ukrainians for people back at home,” she said.
“So, yes, it’s just based on personal experience that I had here. Also the massive support that I got taking into consideration that I played three American girls back to back to back,” she added.
Svitolina, who has a two-year-old daughter with French tennis player Gael Monfils, said she has become a master of compartmentalizing as she tries to keep up with developments at home, spend time with her young family on the road, and keep in touch with her grandmother and other family in Odesa.
She travels there periodically to spend time with family and do work for her charitable foundation.
Talking to family in Ukraine is hard, “because I know that they are not going to be good news,” she said. “It’s been a very long time that there is only bad news coming from Ukraine.”
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