Peer into Open doubles final
11:00, Joshua Levi at Melbourne Park — Sport
ISRAELI champion Shahar Peer and her doubles partner Victoria Azarenka of Belarus are into the final of the Australian Open after making an amazing recovery to defeat the Chinese duo of Zi Yan and Jie Zheng on Wednesday afternoon.
After losing the first set 6-0, Peer and Azarenka made went on to defeat the Chinese team, ranked No 7 in the world, 0-6, 7-5, 7-6 in two hours and 27 minutes at Melbourne Park.
The Israeli-Belarus duo was amazing after being wiped off the court in the first set and facing a match point in the second set.
They overpowered their smaller Chinese opponents with strong ground-strokes and precision volleys.
Peer and Azarenka started well and earned themselves three break points in the first game of the match, which lasted eight minutes, but it was all downhill from there.
The Chinese duo held serve and went on to break three times and win the next five games to wrap up the first set 6-0 in 26 minutes.
The Israeli-Belarus pair fought back and broke Yan and Zheng in the first game of the second set.
However, the Chinese duo quickly broke back and had two match points when they were leading 5-4 on Peer’s serve.
Peer was down 15-40 but was able to recover and win her service game. Peer and Azarenka went on to win the second set 7-5.
As tension grew and the crowd gathered around Margaret Court Arena, Peer and Azarenka broke in the first game of the third set.
They had a chance to extend their lead when they had two break points on Yan’s serve in the fifth game, but desperate volleys and big serves allowed the Chinese pair to hold serve.
Peer then had the match on her racquet and was only two points from victory, at 30-30, but the Chinese pair lifted and broke back to even the set at 5-5.
The teams could not be split and entered a third-set tiebreak.
The first four points went against serve until, Zheng held serve on the fifth point of the tiebreaker.
Peer and Azarenka won themselves a 5-3 lead when Peer hit strong forehands from the back of the court and forced Yan to hit an unforced error when she hit a volley over the baseline.
The next point Azarenka smashed the ball back at the Chinese girls and, when Yan hit the ball into the net, Peer had two match points on her serve.
This time Peer made no mistake and, when the umpire over-ruled the linesman when a ball was hit out, Peer was into her first grand slam final.
Peer, Israel’s top ranked women’s tennis player, was knocked out of the Australian Open singles tournament last week by Russian Elena Dementieva.
