Babos, Hlavackova in comeback doubles victory

SINGAPORE: World number three pairing Timea Babos and Andrea Hlavackova capped a fairytale WTA Finals debut with a 4-6, 6-4, 10-5 comeback victory over Kiki Bertens and Johanna in Singapore on Sunday.

Bertens and Larsson, the unseeded pair, had the edge early but the match turned when the Hungarian-Czech pairing broke in a marathon seventh game of the second set.

They forced a “super tiebreak” set, where a minimum of 10 points is played and a team has to win by a margin of two. Babos and Hlavackova secured a stranglehold when they won the first four points and they held on to clinch the title.

“I thought we were already in the cemetery and we came back from the death,” Babos said after the match.

“They were all over us. I thought early in the second set we had to change something and after that we were so much more powerful and aggressive.”

Babos/Hlavackova had reached the final after stunning world number one Martina Hingis and Chan Yung-Jan on Saturday to end the Swiss great’s glittering career. - AFP