Week 1 - WTA International ($750K) - Shenzhen, China - Hard

AliBlahBlah · All-time great

RE: Week 1 - WTA International ($750K) - Shenzhen, China - Hard

vohor · Grand Slam Champion

Well done Jo; very satisfactory start to the new campaign so far :D
GL in the SFs

Mervatron2 · Challenger qualifying

Much better 1st week than last year too.

Would be nice to start the year with a title.

blob · All-time great

Starting strongly, *3-0

blob · All-time great

First set secured in 23 minutes; didn't even need to play terribly well, and the game Jo lost was a break of serve! 6-1

blob · All-time great

Siniakova serving very strong in set 2. Jo had a soft early game, was broken, and hasn't had a sniff of a chance to get the break back so far, 6-1 4-5*

blob · All-time great

Gonna need to go the distance 6-1 4-6

blob · All-time great

Jo broken immediately, starting to look tough given the way Siniakova served set 2, and has played this week generally. 6-1 4-6 0-1*

indiana · Tennis legend

Did look tough. So at that point Jo won 4 of the next 5 games, including 2 breaks of serve and 2 holds to love to lead *4-2

And then was broken for 4-3*

blob · All-time great

In the balance, final set *4-4
Come on Jo!

blob · All-time great

Ack! 4-5*
Jo is serving really well, but it's not as potent a weapon today as usual.

blob · All-time great

Really let that get away. Siniakova was good in 2 & 3.
Jo won 6 more points in the match, but loses
6-1 4-6 4-6

Solid start to the year; a final points would have been nice insulation, though she's in a limbo zone almost all by herself points wise, unlikely to change all year due to the extra counter for the WTA finals players.
Just keep winning

indiana · Tennis legend

Pity. That all became strangely fluctuating with the final fluctuation going the wrong way.

Yes, Jo a bit in limbo for now at WR 10, especially with poor Petra, the WR 11, out for a while ( not the worse place to limbo by the way ). But I would in fact imagine that a lot will change well before the end of a long year ( well, the kinda usual length of year, but you know what I mean ) Also actually a 17th counter ( by definition their lowest ) is a variable plus, sometimes not much extra benefit at all. The actual big counters players got from the tour finals ( at least 500 points each ) is rather more generally relevant and largely created the current gap ahead of Jo.

Indeed changes will very possibly start with the Aussie Open with such big points at stake. Be tremendous if Jo could at least match last year.

Jan · Hall of fame

bleh

But not the worst start to the year.

PaulM · Tennis legend

Yeah I think Siniakova is going to do some great things this year. Jo didn't play that badly, Kat just really managed to neutralise the serve and then came up with some great tennis.

Positive start to the year, if she can win a match (or two) in a very strong field at Sydney that would be good set-up in terms of competitive match time and some momentum for Melbourne.