WTA Jiujiang: Jiangxi native Zheng Wushuang secures her first WTA main draw victory at home

On October 27th Beijing time, the WTA250 Jiujiang event kicked off the women's singles opening round, where Chinese athlete Guo Hanyu rallied from 3-5 down in the deciding set to beat Korneeva 3-6/6-2/7-6(6), earning her second WTA main draw singles victory of her career (following the WTA1000 Montreal this year). Her current ranking climbed to No.165, marking another career high.

Photo of Guo Hanyu (Image: Visual China)

Guo Hanyu started this tournament from the qualifiers and has now won three consecutive matches. Her second-round opponent will be decided between top seed and last week’s Guangzhou Open champion Li Jinyu and fellow compatriot Bai Zhuoxuan. After the match, Guo said: “I feel very happy. I didn’t have many expectations before the match, just wanted to play every point well. Last week I lost in a third-set tiebreak (Guangzhou), and today reaching a tiebreak made me think this is a chance to improve. I kept telling myself to be brave.”

Photo of Zheng Wushuang (Image: Li Jianyi)

Wildcard entrant Jiangxi native Zheng Wushuang battled Ukrainian player Starodubtseva for 2 hours and 4 minutes, eventually winning 6-3/7-6(5) to claim her first career WTA main draw singles victory. Her ranking jumped 27 places to No.282. In the second round, she will face fifth seed Putintseva, who defeated Kasintseva 6-3/6-1. Another Chinese player, Wei Sijia, lost 2-6/2-6 to sixth seed Bondar in the first round.

Zheng Wushuang first competed in the WTA250 Jiangxi Open in 2016. Nine years later, she achieved a major breakthrough in her hometown of Jiujiang. In a post-match interview, she expressed her excitement: “It’s unbelievable. I’m so happy to win my first WTA match, especially here at home. I missed many chances in recent matches, and losing three match points earlier was tough, but everyone kept encouraging me, so I felt I had to keep fighting.”

Other match results:

Seidel def. Rajona 6-4/6-4

Zakharova [8] def. Shibahara Eina 6-4/6-1

Sharkova won 7-6(2)/7-5 against Faraei

Kopach led 3-0 before Ret. P. Kudermetova retired

(Written and edited by Wang Fei)