Olympic preview: Tennis players get tough draws

None of Taiwan’s tennis Olympians got kind draws in the three Beijing Games tournaments in which they are entered, not even the highly regarded doubles team of Chan Yung-jan and Chuang Chia-jung, seen as Taiwan’s best hope of winning its first ever Olympic tennis medal.

Local media had widely speculated the duo would be seeded first in Beijing based on having the highest doubles rankings of any team entered in the 32-team Olympic event.

But when the draw was made Thursday, Chan and Chuang were made the third seeds, and some local media speculated — without any substantiation — that pressure from China was behind the change.

Not so, says the International Tennis Federation, which set the regulations for the event and was responsible for the method of seeding.

“The Olympic tennis event is unique in that many players play both singles and doubles,” said Neil Robinson, a spokesman for the federation, in an e-mail. “It was therefore decided that for the doubles event in Beijing, a player’s best ranking of singles and doubles would be taken and that this would be added to the partner’s best ranking for seeding.”

The system was actually more targeted at the men’s doubles than the women’s, with top singles players like Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, and Novak Djokovic entered in the event.

The three, who rarely play doubles on the ATP Tour and have doubles rankings outside the top 100, would have been unseeded without help from their singles rankings. The revised system ensures that none of them will play each other in the early rounds of the doubles.

In the women’s event, Chan and Chuang were seeded third, behind Svetlana Kuznetsova and Dinara Safina of Russia and Serena and Venus Williams of the United States.

“The lower seeding will only motivate us to have a fiercer desire to win,” Chan said, while Chuang, after getting over her surprise, saw it as an advantage.

“I really didn’t care if we were the number one seeds. Now the pressure won’t be on us,” Chuang told local media.

But aside from what should be a relatively easy opening match against Alize Cornet and Virginie Razzano of France, neither of whom are ranked in the top 100 in doubles, Chan and Chuang face traps elsewhere in the draw.

If they can get by their second round match against either Alicia Molik and Casey Dellacqua of Australia or the gritty Italian duo of Francesca Schiavone and Flavia Pennetta in the second round, all of whom are accomplished doubles players, they will likely have to face the sixth-seeded Australian Open doubles champions Kateryna and Alona Bondarenko.

And that’s the easy part, because in the semifinals, Chan and Chuang will likely come up against Venus and Serena Williams (if Serena’s knee stays healthy), who won the Wimbledon doubles crown losing no more than four games in any one set.

In singles, Chan and Taiwan’s top men’s player Lu Yen-hsun both got difficult draws.

Lu drew 6th-seeded Andy Murray of the United Kingdom in the opening round of the 64-player men’s singles tourney, while Chan Yung-jan drew eighth-seeded Agnieszka Radwanska of Poland in the first round of the women’s event.

Lu, who had hoped to improve on his first round defeat to Finland’s Jarkko Nieminen in the 2004 Athens Games, will have a tough time with Murray, one of the hottest players on tour after winning the ATP Masters Series event in Cincinnati.

“He’s one of those players who you can never put away. He competes hard and attacks well, so I’m going to have be a little patience against him,” Lu told local media.

Chan is scheduled to play her first round singles match Sunday afternoon, while Lu and the women’s doubles team are expected to play their first matches on Monday.

Subscribe to The China Post and save 25%. Click here

SharePrintEmail

Write a Comment

Terms

Enter your comments - 3000 characters max

Type in image code

Submit

 Receive China Post promos
 Respond to this email