Doubles loss ‘not bad’ for Mladenovic
She and Garcia fell to a last-eight defeat to Hao-Ching Chan and Yaroslava Shvedova
France’s Kristina Mladenovic said there was “nothing bad” about crashing out of the doubles quarter-finals of the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships with her playing partner Caroline Garcia yesterday.
She and fellow Frenchwoman Garcia — who are both ranked World No. 3 in doubles — were top seeds and last year’s losing finalists coming into Dubai, but fell to a last eight defeat to fifth seeds Hao-Ching Chan and Yaroslava Shvedova, 5-7, 6-3, 5-10.
However, Mladenovic wasn’t Ekaterina Makarova, Elena Vesnina beat Jelena Ostapenko, Gabriela Dabrowski, 6-1, 3-6, 10-5. Hao-Ching Chan, Yaroslava Shvedova beat Caroline Garcia, Kristina Mladenovic, 7-5, 3-6, 10-3. Andrea Hlavackova, Shuai Peng beat Martina Hingis, Yung-Jan Chan, 6-4, 6-2. Sania Mirza, Barbora Strycova beat Abigail Spears and Katarina Srebotnik, 6-2, 7-5. too distraught with the outcome as it seems both she and Garcia have got their hearts set on singles. “Well, you know, it’s not easy, this is just our second tournament of the year,” she said.
“We still had a great run in Melbourne where we lost in the semis, and here we’ve had a tough tournament run in the singles, where we both put a lot of energy,” she said in reference to her own quarter-finals singles defeat to Qiang Wang, and Garcia’s last 32 loss to Monica Puig.
“It’s our goal this year to be more focused in singles, we are switching sides every set and really working a lot more on our singles game. We are just trying to have fun and still be successful but there’s nothing bad with this defeat.
“It’s just the beginning. When you’ve only played one tournament together it’s not easy to adjust, but we look forward to a long season, Miami is coming up, so everything is just positive.”
Chan and Shvedova will now play sixth seeds Andrea Hlavackova and Shuai Peng in the first semi-final after the latter dispatched fourth seeds Martina Hingis and Yung-Jan Chan 6-4, 6-2. In the other semi-final second seeds Elena Vesnina and Ekaterina Makarova will play third seeds Sania Mirza and Barbora Strycova.