Top 5 WTA matches in 2018: No.5, Wang shocks Muguruza in Hong Kong
Hours after completing her maiden Top 5 win over top seed Elina Svitolina, Qiang Wang rallied back to beat 6-7(5), 6-4, 7-5 Garbiñe Muguruza reaching the Prudential Hong Kong Tennis Open final. "I felt nervous before the first match. I went on the court a little bit shaky, but after two games, it was okay. I just went for it," said Wang who was 4-1 down in the decider.
Wang opened her best season so far with first-round exits in Shenzhen, Australian Open, and Doha and a second-round showing in Dubai. At Indian Wells, she reached R16 at a Premier Mandatory tournament for the second time in her career after 2017 Madrid. Her season began to change on clay, as she claimed the quarter-finals in Strasbourg. Wang then enjoyed her best result at Roland Garros by reaching the third-round, after beating No.9 V.Williams in the opening match in what was her then-best win rankings-wise of her career, since bettered by victories over No.7 Karolina Pliskova at Wuhan and Beijing.
In July, Wang lifted her first tour-level title in Nanchang losing only one set and began a stunning streak in home tournaments. She dropped just 18 games total en route to the title in Guangzhou, the fewest in winning a WTA singles title in 2018, becoming the fourth Chinese woman to lift the trophy in the tournament's 15-year history after also Li (2004), Yan (2005) and Zhang (2013 and 2017). Wang reinforced her breakthrough season during the Asian swing with semifinal showings in Hiroshima, Wuhan, her first at WTA Premier-level or above, and then Beijing.
In the Hong Kong semifinal, Wang twice led by an early break in the first set but was unable to keep her lead and Muguruza won one of the only four tiebreaks she has managed to clinch throughout the season.
The Chinese No.1, who hadn't surrendered the first set in her previous matches that week, twice led by a break also in the second set but this time she came back from 0-40 down in the 10th game to serve it out and force a decider.
Muguruza tried to change the pattern of her first semifinal since Roland Garros, where she lost to Halep, remaining one win away from returning to WTA World No.1 in Paris, suffering her third loss against No.1-ranked players to four victories, having beaten Serena Williams (2014 Roland Garros, 2016 Roland Garros), Kerber (2017 Wimbledon), and Pliskova (2017 Cincinnati).
Hong Kong is a special place for Wang, who played here her first tour-level semifinal in 2017. The renewed level of confidence helped her to come back and produce one of her nine three-set wins of the season. She showed enough determination to rally and win the nearly three-hour encounter.
The18-year-old Ukranian Dayana Yastremska, however, stunned Shuai Zhang to erase the chance of al all-Chinese title-match and sealed her maiden WTA final. The sixth teenager this year and fourth born in this century to reach a WTA final was 1-6 in WTA main-draw match this year before Hong Kong, but she dominated the match and comfortably triumphed.
Both players qualified for the final event of the season, the WTA Elite Trophy in Zhuhai. Muguruza, making her debut, battled past wildcard Zhang in three sets in first round-robin match, then she saved three match points to defeat No.11 Sevastova in her first victory over a Top 20 player since February.
Wang lost the opening Azalea Group match in a tight third set to No.10 Kasatkina. But she managed to overcome the fifth Top 10 defeat in nine matches in 2018 as she bounced back by coming from a set down to defeat Keys in the second round-robin match. Despite coming second in the group, she took the alternate place in the semifinals after Keys’ withdrawal with a left knee injury and thrashed Muguruza 6-2 6-0 winning the final 11 games of the match. That was her 37th tour-level win of the season, the first season she has registered 30 or more main draw victories in a single year.
Wang, the first Chinese player to reach the Zhuhai final, broke into the Top 20 for the first time by that result but had to surrender to Barty in the title match. “You need to have strong stamina to go against your opponents,” Wang said after the final match of the year. “And second of all, you should have a strong mind so that you should believe in yourself to say that I can do it no matter if I'm winning or losing,”
from Tennis World USA https://ift.tt/2E0taLf
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