Zhang claims maiden singles title
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E-mail Shanghai Daily, September 22, 2013
China's wildcard entrant Zhang Shuai won her maiden WTA Tour singles title with a 7-6 (1), 6-1 victory over American qualifier Vania King in the Guangzhou Open final yesterday.
Playing in her first singles final, the 112th-ranked Zhang continued her run of straight-set victories and won the US$500,000 hardcourt tournament in front of her delighted home crowd in south China's Guangdong Province.
After an evenly-matched first set, Zhang ran through the second, winning 16 of the last 17 points against the 124th-ranked American.
Zhang converted her first break point of the match in the opening game of the second set and went on to break King two more times to wrap up the match in 1 hour, 37 minutes.
She became the first Chinese player to win the Guangzhou Open since Yan Zi in 2005. King was trying to become the first American winner of the tournament, but failed to convert any of her four break points.
Zhang, whose previous best singles performance was reaching the semifinals in the same event in 2010, also became the fifth Chinese player to win a WTA title after Li Na, Zheng Jie, Yan and Sun Tiantian.
In Seoul, top-seeded Agnieszka Radwanska advanced to the final of the Korea Open yesterday with a 6-0, 6-2 win over Spain's Lara Arruabarrena.
Radwanska, making her debut at the tournament, hit eight aces in a match that lasted 1 hour, 4 minutes.
"It was definitely a very good match — I was playing really good tennis," Radwanska said. "It was really hot out there but I played my 100 percent throughout the match, so that's why it was two quick sets."
The Polish player will face third-seeded Russian Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova in today's final.
Pavlyuchenkova had a much harder time in her semifinal, beating former French Open champion Francesca Schiavone of Italy, 7-6 (11), 7-6 (6).
Pavlyuchenkova saved three set points in the first tiebreaker and came back from 0-3 down in the second to close it out.
"I'm so tired right now, to be honest," Pavlyuchenkova said. "I'm happy to be in the final, but I'm still thinking about the match, how tough it was."
Radwanska leads Pavlyuchenkova 2-1 in head-to-head matches, though only one of those meetings came in the last four years — a tight two-setter in Radwanska's favor at the US Open a few weeks ago.
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