Updated
Samantha Stosur's performance problems on home soil have continued with a disappointing first-round loss to China's Jie Zheng in the Sydney International.
While showing some improvement, Stosur was forced to battle it out with the world number 42 before losing 3-6, 7-6 (8-6), in two hours and 36 minutes.
She rebounded from match point down to take the match to three sets, but despite a brave effort she could not produce her top form with enough consistency to clinch the match.
The defeat marked the 28-year-old's fifth-straight loss in Australia, dating back to a first-round exit at last year's Australian Open.
She will now go into next week's first grand slam of the year at Melbourne Park short of match practice.
Stosur had had a poor start to the year when she bowed out of last week's Brisbane International in the first-round, losing to Swede Sofia Arvidsson, and the alarms were ringing again when Zheng jumped out to a 3-0 lead in the opening set.
The Gold Coast-native got on the scoreboard to hold her own serve, but the 29-year-old Zheng was playing confidently off the back of hitting 77 per cent of her first serves and she sealed the opening set in 43 minutes.
Stosur showed fight to win five straight points from 0-40 to hold serve for 3-2 in the second set, and she then raced through the next two games - including a break - for a 5-2 lead.
Stosur was starting to come into her own, hitting for the corners and putting Zheng on the defensive, but she could not quite make the final breakthrough.
Zheng survived a string of break points to hold in the eighth game, caught her opponent on the hop to get the break back and then held to level at 5-5.
The set eventually went to a tie-break, with a number of mini-breaks of serve.
Zheng had a match point on Stosur's serve at 6-7, but the Australian forced an error from her opponent to hold on.
Another error off Zheng's racket then brought up set point, before her passing shot on the run went long to give Stosur the set in 72 minutes.
Stosur looked confident in the final set, and she broke early to take a 3-1 lead.
Zheng looked down and out, but she dug in and forced a break before levelling at 3-3.
She held for 4-3 and then played solid on Stosur's serve, drawing errors from the Australian's racket before hitting an almost unplayable cross-court return to get the break for 5-3.
Serving for the match, Zheng went down three break points, and although she saved one, Stosur converted the second to take it back to 4-5.
The Australian could not take her chance, however, making a series of errors to go down 0-40.
Stosur rifled a forehand winner to save one match point, but a backhand into the net finally ended the match after two and a half hours.
Topics: sport, tennis, sydney-2000, nsw, australia
First posted
No comments:
Post a Comment