The Chinese duo have dropped only eight games in their run to the semi-finals.
The Chinese duo have dropped only eight games in their run to the semi-finals.
[photo: Xinhua]
The seventh-seeded doubles team of Zheng Jie and Yung-Jan Chan moved into the semi-finals on Wednesday with a 6-4, 6-4 win over Americans Bethanie Mattek-Sands and Meghann Shaughnessy.
Chan of Chinese Taipei utilized her strong serving to put the Chinese pair over the line. She didn't rocket them in, but rarely missed with her first serve and dropped no more than a handful of points in total, coming up with crucial 5-4 holds in both sets.
The Americans missed a chance to pull ahead in the first set with a 3-1 lead after China's Zheng was broken at love, but Mattek-Sands was broken twice in a row to set Chan for the first-set hold.
Mattek-Sands' serving failed to improve and the Chinese pair broke once more when Zheng passed down the middle for a 3-1 lead in the second set, never relinquishing their lead, taking the match after a series of errors by the Americans, including one slow-bouncing ball down the middle that each expected the other to take.
"Yung-Jan played in style today. She gave me a lot of encouragement on the court," said Zheng. "The Williams sisters are not in the doubles draw, so every pair here has a chance to win."
Zheng and Chan have had a relatively easy time so far in the tournament, only losing a total of eight games in the tournament and enjoying a second-round walkover win over Dominika Cibulkova and Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova.
But in the semi-finals they will face the second-seeded coupling of Liezel Huber and Nadia Petrova, which should provide more of a challenge for the young Chinese duo.
"We lost a recent match against Huber and Petrova, so we have to care about each point in the semifinal. Playing with a strong mind, I think it will help us," added Zheng.
