No.6 seeds Nicole Melichar-Martinez and Ellen Perez kept their hopes of reaching the WTA Finals Riyadh semifinals alive with a 6-1, 6-3 defeat of No.1 seeds Lyudmyla Kichenok and Jelena Ostapenko on the last day of Green Group action.
WTA Finals Riyadh: Scores | Schedule | Standings
Melichar-Martinez and Perez finish the round-robin stage with a 2-1 record. They now require No.8 seeds Katerina Siniakova and Taylor Townsend to defeat No.3 seeds Hsieh Su-Wei and Elise Mertens in the final Green Group match on Wednesday evening. Should that ensue, Siniakova and Townsend will top the group and second place will go to Melichar-Martinez and Perez. However, a win for Hsieh and Mertens would put them in the top spot, with Siniakova and Townsend second.
US Open champions Kichenok and Ostapenko finish their second WTA Finals appearance with a 0-3 round-robin record, having held match point over Siniakova and Townsend in their opening contest.
The result levels the teams' head-to-head at two wins apiece. Kichenok and Ostapenko notched a pair of straight-sets wins in 2022, but Melichar-Martinez and Perez have now taken both of their 2024 encounters (following their victory in the Indian Wells quarterfinals).
Kichenok and Ostapenko got off to a disastrous start, dropping serve courtesy of two Kichenok volley misses and consecutive Ostapenko double faults. That set the tone for a first set in which the Ukrainian-Latvian pair's unforced errors accounted for 18 out of the 26 points won by Melichar-Martinez and Perez.
The second set was slightly more competitive, but once Melichar-Martinez and Perez broke Kichenok's serve for 2-1, the American-Australian duo were able to maintain that lead to the finishing line, wrapping up the victory in just 59 minutes. Kichenok and Ostapenko finished with 34 unforced errors outweighing their 13 winners, while Melichar-Martinez and Perez tallied eight winners and 12 unforced errors.
"Our first couple of matches, the first one was topsy-turvy and the second was meh," said Melichar-Martinez afterwards. "Today we really focused, and if it's our last match here, at least we end on a high."
Perez added that their tactics and team spirit had been spot on.
"We made a lot of first serves and were able to jam them up pretty well," she said. "We kept really positive and energetic, and that was the goal for the match -- just to stay upbeat."
