Reuters
[Source: Reuters]
Latvian Jelena Ostapenko and Ukraine’s Lyudmyla Kichenok won the women’s doubles crown at the U.S. Open with a 6-4 6-3 victory over Chinese-French pairing Zhang Shaui and Kristina Mladenovic.
The win marked the first women’s Grand Slam doubles title for former French Open singles champion Ostapenko and Kichenok, who also reached the final together at this year’s Australian Open.
Ostapenko and Kichenok broke in the second game for an early advantage and, after the Chinese-French pairing got the set back on serve, had a massive hold in an eight-deuce game during which they fought off five break points for a 5-4 lead.
From there, Zhang was unable to keep the stanza alive and ultimately gifted the frame to her seventh-seeded opponents with a double-fault on the second set point.
In the second set, Zhang and Mladenovic broke early for a 2-0 lead but Ostapenko and Kichenok broke the Chinese for a third time to reach 3-3 and broke the Frenchwoman at love to reach 5-3 before Ostapenko closed out the match on her serve.
