TOKYO, 21 Sep: Top seed Paula Badosa, second seed Caroline Garcia and Wimbledon champion Elena Rybakina were knocked out of the Pan Pacific Open on Wednesday.
\nBadosa was overwhelmed by Qinwen Zheng, the 19-year-old rapid improver from China, 6-3, 6-2. Qinwen won 10 of the last 12 games, playing fearlessly on Badosa\u2019s serve to break her four times.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s not a surprise, I always knew I had the level, I just had to make it,\u201d Qinwen said after her first completed top-10 win.
\nQinwen\u2019s third quarterfinal of the year will be against Claire Liu, who beat Elise Mertens 6-4, 6-1.
\nGarcia was upset by another Chinese in the second round, Zhang Shuai, who prevailed 4-6, 7-6 (5), 7-6 (5) in 2 1\/2 hours.
\nGarcia broke Zhang in the opening game and won the set with her 10th ace. But despite serving 27 aces \u2014 beating Qinwen\u2019s mark of 21 in a match for best on tour this year \u2014 Garcia couldn\u2019t hold her form and Zhang used her speed and precision to take the second set.
\nZhang said her many years of playing and training in Japan paid off.
\n\u201cI was trying to stay calm. I told myself in the tough moments how I never lose on this court so today I will win,\u201d she said. \u201cThis is my home tournament so that gave me a lot of motivation. Everything is positive here and that\u2019s why I played really well.\u201d
\nRybakina was coming off losing a three-set final in Slovenia last weekend but struggled to find any rhythm against an in-form Liudmila Samsanova, who won their tournament opener 6-2, 6-4.
\nSamsonova won two tournaments in August and reached the fourth round of the U.S. Open, and was calmly efficient in Tokyo.
\n\u201cI\u2019m incredibly happy about this match,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s always tough to play Elena. She\u2019s a big champion now so I was prepared for a big fight. Last month was very positive for me. Winning a tournament I have more confidence, but I have to stay focused.\u201d
\nShe faces China\u2019s Xinyu Wang in the second round.
\nThird-seeded Garbine Muguruza avoided the upsets after a first-round bye by cruising past Greek qualifier Despina Papam-ichail 6-4, 6-2 to reach the quarterfinals. (PTI)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
TOKYO, 21 Sep: Top seed Paula Badosa, second seed Caroline Garcia and Wimbledon champion Elena Rybakina were knocked out of the Pan Pacific Open on Wednesday. Badosa was overwhelmed by Qinwen Zheng, the 19-year-old rapid improver from China, 6-3, 6-2. Qinwen won 10 of the last 12 games, playing fearlessly on Badosa\u2019s serve to break […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-201052","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201052"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201052\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}