Taiwan’s top-ranked female tennis player Hsieh Su-wei (???) and Elise Mertens of Belgium advanced to the women’s doubles semifinals at the BNP Paribas Open in California after ousting American Coco Gauff and Canadian Leylah Fernandez on Tuesday.
Hsieh and Martens, this year’s Wimbledon champions and the second seeds at the Indiana Wells tournament, won the match 7-5, 6-4 in an hour and 27 minutes.
After the victory, Hsieh put on a dinosaur hat at the request of a member of the pair’s physio team.
“They were helping us for the whole year. They are working so hard and gave me this yesterday,” the 35-year-old said. “It was her birthday, so she requested, and I think ‘OK, I’ll do it.'”
The Taiwanese-Belgian team will face the third-seeded Japanese duo of Shuko Aoyama and Ena Shibahara on Friday, U.S. time. The two teams last met in the semifinals at Wimbledon in July in a match won by Hsieh and Mertens in three sets.
Hsieh has won the doubles titles twice in Indiana Wells, the first time in 2014 with Peng Shuai (??) of China and the second time in 2018 with Barbora Strycova of the Czech Republic.
Mertens is defending the title she won in 2019 with Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus, after the tournament was canceled in 2020 and postponed from its usual March dates this year due to COVID-19.
Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel