A FINAL BLOW: Top seed Garbine Muguruza yesterday alleviated fears of another injury setback, twice breaking Kiki Bertens, who lost the tiebreaker with a long serve
Taipei Times
Date:Jan 11, 2018
By: Dave Carroll / Staff reporter, with Reuters, SYDNEY
Taiwan’s Latisha Chan and Czech partner Andrea Sestini Hlavackova yesterday
Taiwan’s Latisha Chan, left, and Andrea Sestini Hlavackova of the Czech Republic pose for photographs after winning their Sydney International doubles quarter-final in Australia yesterday. Photo: screen grab from Facebook
survived a second-set meltdown to advance to the semi-finals of the doubles at the Sydney International, the final warm-up tournament before next week’s Australian Open.
The top seeds took one hour, 37 minutes to see off Andreja Klepac of Slovenia and Maria Jose Martinez Sanchez 7-6 (7/3), 1-6, 10-6, saving five of 11 break points and converting four of nine.
Chan, who previously played on the WTA Tour using her Chinese name, Chan Yung-jan, and Sestini Hlavackova advanced to the semi-finals despite winning only 67 of the 140 points contested and they next face Lara Arruabarrena of Spain and Lauren Davis of the US, who stunned fourth seeds Kiki Bertens of the Netherlands and Johanna Larsson of Sweden 7-6 (7/4), 2-6, 10-7.
In the other semi-final, second seeds Lucie Safarova and Barbora Strycova are due to take on third seeds Gabriela Dabrowski and Xu Yifan after the Czech duo edged Kateryna Bondarenko of Ukraine and Casey Dellacqua of Australia 6-4, 3-6, 10-7, while the Canadian-Chinese pairing defeated Shuko Aoyama of Japan and Yang Zhaoxuan of China 6-4, 7-5. [FULL STORY]
