Kiki Bertens of the Netherlands and Sweden’s Johanna Larsson have knocked Casey Dellacqua and Ashleigh Barty out of the WTA Finals in Singapore in a thrilling encounter.
Bertens and Larsson won 7-6 (9-7) 6-7 (1-7) 10-6 on Friday in one hour and 54 minutes.
The fourth seeds dominated parts of the match, but their opponents held on for a tenacious victory.
The Australian duo had never played their opponents before and, after a tense start, they pulled away.
But Barty was broken as she served for the first set, and Larsson and Bertens launched a stirring comeback.
They lunged for several improbable shots and broke the Australians’ serve again to take a 6-5 lead after Dellacqua hit a return into the net.
Then it was Larsson’s turn to lose serve for the set, and a tiebreaker was necessary.
Like earlier, Barty and Dellacqua led early, but Bertens and Larsson hung in to take back the lead and won the opening set in 51 minutes.
Barty and Dellacqua started well in the second, going a break ahead early.
The rest of the set was even and the Australians missed another chance to close it out on serve, inviting Larsson and Bertens back into the contest again.
Bertens and Larsson blew a match point opportunity at 6-5, allowing Barty and Dellacqua to force another tiebreaker.
The Australians made them pay for that mistake, blowing them off the court in the tiebreaker to level at one-set apiece.
There are no third sets in doubles at the WTA Finals, with teams instead playing a “tiebreak set”, in which a minimum of 10 points is played and a team has to win by a margin of two.
Bertens and Larsson took it out 10-6, and will meet the winner of the evening doubles match between Russian duo Ekaterina Makarova and Elena Vesnina against Gabriela Dabrowski of Canada and Yifan Xu from China.
In the singles, the last semi-final spot in the Red Group will be decided on Friday.
Denmark’s Caroline Wozniacki closes out the afternoon session against Caroline Garcia of France.
Wozniacki has already qualified for the last four but her exact position will be determined by her result on Friday and that of the first match of the night session, pitting world No.1 Simona Halep against Elina Svitolina.
Garcia, Halep and Svitolina can all still qualify depending on their results.