TENNIS/In tight finish, Chan, Kudermetova ousted from WTA Finals semis

Taipei, Nov. 9 (CNA) Taiwan's Chan Hao-ching (詹皓晴) and Russia's Veronika Kudermetova fell short in their bid to reach the women's doubles final at the WTA Finals in Saudi Arabia on Friday after failing to capitalize on opportunities in the second set.

Facing Wimbledon champions Katerina Siniakova of the Czech Republic and Taylor Townsend of the United States, Chan and Kudermetova lost 6-0, 7-6 (5) in the tournament's semifinals, but they did not go down without a fight.

Siniakova and Townsend seemed set to coast to the final after going up 6-0, 4-2, but Chan and Kudermetova rallied to win the next three games and Chan had a chance to serve out the set at 5-4 and send the match to a super tiebreaker.

But Siniakova and Townsend broke Chan's serve, then won the next game to go up 6-5 and had two match points on Kudermetova's serve that the Taiwan-Russia duo saved.

In the tiebreaker, the Wimbledon champions, seeded eighth at the WTA Finals, raced to a 6-1 lead, but again Chan and Kudermetova, the seventh seeds, saved four match points, pulling to within 6-5, before succumbing to a great crosscourt passing shot by Siniakova.

"When you win a 6-0 set, it's never easy. We were playing so well and sometimes it's easy to have expectations to continue that, but your opponents adjust and we saw how that ended up," Townsend said after the 90-minute match.

Despite the defeat, the match gave the 31-year-old Chan her best showing at the WTA Finals since 2015, when she reached the semifinals in her WTA Finals debut with sister Latisha Chan (詹詠然). She also competed in the tournament in 2016 and 2019.

This year's WTA Finals, held in Riyadh, features the top eight singles players and doubles teams in the world competing for the year-end championship.

Also competing in the tournament was Taiwan's Hsieh Su-wei (謝淑薇), who paired with Elise Mertens of Belgium but was eliminated in the qualifying round with a 1-2 record in their three Group Green matches.