Venus Williams was looking very good during her match at the 2023 Cincinnati Masters against Qinwen Zheng, but then she ran out of steam and allowed her opponent to turn around the match.
Venus Williams is amazing. That needs to be said immediately because what she's doing is quite impressive. Yes, she lost to Qinwen Zheng, but the Chinese player is a Top 30-ranked player on the WTA Tour, trending towards the Top 20. After all, let's remember that Williams defeated Veronika Kudermetova in the opening round of this event.
That win didn't come by chance, and after all, who knows what would have happened at Wimbledon had she not suffered the shocking fall against Sivtolina. When it comes to this match, well, it was spectacular early on. She was obliterating the ball though it was greatly helped by Zheng, who debuted a new serving technique.
It didn't quite look the way it generally does, and it wasn't really working either. She hit her first serve only 34 % of the time in the opening set and had seven double faults. It gave Williams plenty of free points and allowed her to unleash her pretty good baseline play.
She crushed her in the opening set and continued where she left off in the second set with an early 2-0 lead. Then it all fell apart rather quickly. Zheng started to play much better, the serve became very solid out of nowhere, and her confidence grew.
It was reflected in the rallies as she overpowered her opponent, cruising to a pretty quick 6-2 finish. The final set opened similarly as Zheng still dominated. Williams simply didn't have the fire she had in the opening set, and the ship continued to sink.
By the time the score showed 1-6 6-4 4-0, Zheng was already on a 10-game winning streak. The final score was 1-6 6-4 6-1 for Zheng, who produced a spectacular comeback win.
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