Tennis News

MIAMI, FL, USA – No.4 seeds Timea Babos and Yaroslava Shvedova secured their place in the Miami Open doubles final with a hard-fought win over Margarita Gasparyan and Monica Niculescu on Friday.

Gasparyan and Niculescu have been the tournament’s surprise package, knocking out a number of more seasoned teams, including top seeds and defending champions Martina Hingis and Sania Mirza. However, Babos and Shvedova were determined not to add their names to the list of upsets, digging deep to close out a 7-5, 4-6, 10-8 victory in an hour and 41 minutes.

“It was a tough match because the girls played well – they’ve proved through this two weeks that they’re a very good team – and it was not easy,” Shvedova said. “The conditions were windy and Monica has a special style of playing, so we needed to be patient and keep working hard.”

The outcome of a see-saw encounter remained in the balance until the very last, Gasparyan and Niculescu rallying from 8-5 down in the match tie-break to come within two points of victory. “It’s our style, we were down in both sets and then almost in the super tie-break, too,” Babos added.

“But we enjoy playing with each other – on my part, for sure! – and this makes it a lot easier to fight for every point and as it shows in doubles anything can happen. Basically they didn’t do any mistakes but we were fighting and coming back, taking it point by point and in the end we got the tie-break.”

Having lifted the Tashkent title in their first outing together two and a half years ago, Babos and Shvedova reunited for Indian Wells, where they proceeded to make the semifinals before being edged out by Bethanie Mattek-Sands and CoCo Vandeweghe.

Sunday’s final at Crandon Park presents a shot at – partial – revenge, after Mattek-Sands and Lucie Safarova prevailed, 6-2, 6-1, in their clash against Zheng Saisai and Xu Yi-Fan.

“It was a great match, we knew we had to play well, but I love the night match atmosphere – a lot of fans stayed after the men’s match – and it’s great because we really had a lot of fan support and they were cheering for some great tennis,” Mattek-Sands said.

The result means that Mattek-Sands remains on course to become just the third player to win Indian Wells and Miami in the same year with different partners; Natasha Zvereva triumphed alongside Lindsay Davenport at Indian Wells and Arantxa Sánchez-Vicario at Miami, in 1997, before Martina Hingis repeated the feat two years later, teaming up with Anna Kournikova at Indian Wells and Jana Novotna at Miami.

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia – Magda Linette says she was surprised when fourth seed Peng Shuai was forced to retire from their third-round match at the Alya Malaysian Open – but she is now ready for her next opponent.

“You are always surprised when someone retires, you’re never ready for that,” the Polish player told reporters after the match. “You just need to be focused on your own game and just try to play your own tennis. I’m glad I stayed focused.”

The 25-year-old said she noticed Peng struggling with her serve before the fourth seed admitted she could not continue, 5-2 down with just 28 minutes of the match gone.

.@MagdaLinette is in control of the first set! #alyawtamalaysianopen pic.twitter.com/5TWC2jE0Hf

— WTA (@WTA) March 2, 2017

Nevertheless, Linette was satisfied with her performance.

“I was aggressive, that was the plan, to play my own game, and I realised that most of the time,” she said. “I’m pretty happy. It was short. It’s tough to judge, but I’m happy.”

Next up for the World No.93 is Duan Ying-Ying, one of only two seeds remaining in the draw, but Linette says that no quarterfinal match would be a straightforward one.

“Everyone plays good,” she said. “Qualifiers beat the third seed and second seed. So it’s not easier now, those players are good. Even the wildcard I played two days ago was a tough one, so obviously there are no easy players, it’s even tougher because the girls are so motivated to play. I’m lucky, I’m very happy and looking forward to tomorrow.”