Doubles drama in Singapore as accusations of ‘backstabbing’ emerge

Joanna Garland appears to be at the centre of drama after retiring from her doubles match at the Singapore Open.

Garland was a big story at the Australian Open this year, having beaten both Alexander Zverev and Nick Kyrgios en route to reaching the final of the One Point Slam, where she narrowly missed out on one million Australian dollars.

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Since then, Garland, who is the world number 168, had struggled to translate this to the WTA Tour until the Singapore Open, where she came through qualifying before obtaining her first main draw win of the year.

Garland also played alongside her Taiwanese compatriot and nine-time Grand Slam champion Hsieh Su-wei, but it appears that this partnership has not ended well.

Joanna Garland appears to accuse Hsieh Su-wei of backstabbing her

Garland's singles run in Singapore came to an end after she was beaten by Xinyu Wang in straight sets, but she still had doubles to compete in.

It was the first time that Garland had ever played with former doubles world number one Hsieh, and they made a very impressive start to their first tournament together after beating second seeds Olivia Nicholls and Tereza Mihalikova.

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Garland and Hsieh also won the first set of their quarter-final match against Erin Routliffe and Aldila Sutjiadi, but they did not play another game. Garland and Hsieh then retired after it appeared that the former was struggling with a left foot injury, but it has now emerged that there may be more to this.

Shortly after the retirement, Garland shared an image on Instagram which said, "In conclusion, I got played," before she then posted the same image again and added, "And backstabbed*".

Many tennis fans on social media were confused by these posts, but top 20 WTA doubles player Ellen Perez has now provided some insight on this issue.

When responding to a tennis fan on X, Perez revealed that Garland was actually asked by Hsieh to withdraw so that she was able to compete in mixed doubles at the Asian Games. Both Hsieh and Garland are set to compete at the Asian Games and were potentially going to compete with each other, but now the former is confirmed to be competing alongside En-Shuo Liang.

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Perez wrote, "Well Su Wei asked Joanna to pull out so she can make it to the mixed doubles in time and now Joanna goes back in prize money and will be penalized in other ways. And now Su Wei has dropped her for Liang and will probably cite Joanna as injured as her excuse."

The Australian then added more information as to why this would be damaging to Garland, whose retirement means that she will now not be able to enter doubles tournaments using her singles ranking, like she did in Singapore, for 15 weeks as per WTA rules and will also lose some prize money.

Perez added, "Joanna will go back a round in prize money and no longer be able to use her singles ranking to enter doubles. She only played for Su Wei and in the end she gets dropped anyways for Asian games. Toughhhhh."

Garland is confirmed to be in the singles draw at the Asian Games, while Hsieh will compete in both doubles alongside Liang and mixed doubles with Chun-Hsin Tseng.

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