Fichman drops late-night heartbreaker at WTA Finals

Despite getting out to a big lead, Canada’s Sharon Fichman and partner Giuliana Olmos lost their second match of the round robin at the WTA Finals late Saturday night in Guadalajara.

The Canadian-Mexican team started quickly, but as the match went on their opponents, Alexa Guarachi of Chile and Desirae Krawczyk of the USA, found their rhythm and eventually outlasted Fichman and Olmos in a match super tiebreak 0-6, 6-3, [11-9].

In the end, a few key points decided the match, as the eighth seeds were beaten despite winning more total points, 55 to 50, and breaking serve three times while only having their own serve broken once.

Even though they are now 0-2, the Canadian-Mexican pair can still advance to the semi-finals if all goes right on Monday.

Fichman and Olmos got off to a dream start in the must-win match, breaking serve in the opening game and never looking back. They swept the first set, scoring three breaks on their way to a bagel in just 20 minutes.

They only lost nine total points in the opening set.

Guarachi and Krawczyk finally got themselves into the match with a hold to start the second set, but still had to overcome some early challenges by saving a pair of break points in the fourth game.

In the next game, Fichman and Olmos found themselves under pressure on serve for the first time, with Olmos going down love-30 and needing to save a deciding point, which she did when Guarachi missed her return.

But the momentum was shifting to the Chilean-American pair and two games later, they finally broke through when Olmos netted a volley on a deciding point and took a 5-3 lead. Krawczyk served out the set in the following game.

It all came down to the match tiebreak, where Olmos netted a backhand to go down double match point at 7-9. But the Canadian-Mexican pair were not finished, saving both match points to level the breaker at 9-all.  

Fichman missed a return to give them a third match point, and this time Krawczyk crushed an overhead to clinch the comeback victory.

Hope is not all lost for Fichman and Olmos, who could still advance to the semi-finals with a win over Elise Mertens and Su-Wui Hsieh and get some help.

If they beat the Wimbledon champions and Guarachi and Krawczyk lose to top seeds Barbora Krejcikova and Katerina Siniakova, second place in the group will be decided by percentage of sets won.