Taiwan's Hsieh advances to WTA Finals doubles title match

Taipei, Nov. 3 (CNA) Taiwan's Hsieh Su-wei (謝淑薇) and playing partner Barbora Strycova of the Czech Republic will vie for the WTA Finals doubles title in Shenzhen after steamrolling through their semifinal match Saturday night.

Hsieh and Strycova, seeded second in the eight-team event, overwhelmed eighth seeds Anna-Lena Groenefeld of Germany and Demi Schuurs of the Netherlands 6-1, 6-2 in under an hour.

They will face defending champions and third seeds Timea Babos of Hungary and Kristina Mladenovic of France in the final, to be played late Sunday afternoon.

Hsieh will be vying for her second WTA Finals doubles title, after winning the event with Peng Shuai (彭帥) of China in 2013, while Strycova will be gunning for her first WTA Finals trophy.

The duo, which won the women's doubles title at Wimbledon earlier this year, have been eyeing a run at the WTA Finals, and now they have a chance to win it.

"It was our goal, actually, when we started playing. A Grand Slam was our first goal, and the second was to qualify here. And it happened," Strycova was quoted as saying on the WTA website after qualifying for the semifinals.

"We will just fight and we will try to get as many wins as you can."

Though they topped Babos and Mladenovic in the Wimbledon semifinals, Hsieh and Strycova will have a tough challenge on their hands in Sunday's final.

The French-Hungarian duo won all three of their round-robin matches in Shenzhen and are battle tested after surviving a semifinal match in which they were down a set and a break and trailed 7-3 in the decisive first-to-10 super tiebreaker.

Hsieh and Strycova had a much easier run Saturday, breaking Groenefeld and Schuurs in seven of eight service games while only being broken twice themselves.

The pair will win US$950,000 if they clinch the title, after taking two of their three matches in round-robin play to qualify for the semifinals.

Meanwhile, Taiwan's Latisha Chan (詹詠然) and Chan Hao-ching (詹皓晴) failed to get out of the group stage after losing all three of their round-robin matches.