Qinwen Zheng is invincible on Chinese soil as she downed Barbora Krejcikova in a very long match to lift the 2023 Zhengzhou Open trophy.
Krejcikova has had a fascinating season so far, with a couple of extremely good performances in between some rather lacklustre play. She's known as a streaky player, but she took that to the next level this year, and this week looked like one of her good weeks. She was beating players left and right until today.
Today was the final of the Zhengzhou Open, and she faced off against native player Qinwen Zheng, who played amazingly recently. She won the Asian Games and continued her good form this week by smashing her opponents without any problems. Today wasn't flawless, but she endured a very long and gruelling battle against Krejcikova to lift the trophy.
The match lasted 2.5 hours, with the final set lasting over an hour. The first one went to Krejcikova despite Zheng jumping out to an early 2-0 lead. Once Krejcikova finally found her rhythm, she won six games in a row to win the opening set 6-2. The second set lasted about the same amount of time and had the same score, but Zheng won it.
It was eerie how similar the sets were with roles reversed. Zheng lost the first set because she couldn't hit her first serve at all, hitting it only 29 % of the time. It gave Krejcikova plenty of chances, and she took it. The second set was the same. Only Krejcikova struggled with her serve, hitting it only 20 % of the time.
The final set was a close one between the players, with many ups and downs. We saw three breaks in the final four games, with Zheng ultimately getting it done. The final score was 2-6 6-2 6-4 for the Chinese player who won the trophy on native soil.
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