Zheng Qinwen, last year’s Australian Open finalist, was stunned by world No. 97 Laura Siegemund in this year’s competition, making her the highest-ranking athlete who dropped this early in this year’s tournament.
Zheng lost to the 36-year-old German athlete with final scores of 7-6 (3), 6-3. This was only the third time in her career that Siegemund advanced to the third round in Australia.
Zheng confessed: “Not much to say because I tried to do what I can during this match, but I feel maybe today is not my day… There are a lot of details on the important points that I didn’t make the right choice.”
She added: “I had a lot of chances to break her in the first set, but in that moment, maybe my concentration wasn’t there, I always made an easy mistake in those moments.”
Heated argument during the match
During the match, Zheng, who also won gold in women’s singles at the Paris Olympics, was given time violations twice as she was getting ready to serve. The umpire kept telling her that she should look at the clock before she started preparing to serve. However, Zheng said that she could not see the clock from where she was serving and had a contentious argument with the umpire.
Zheng stated: “From my angle, the time was on the side, so I couldn’t see if I bounced the ball, I couldn’t catch the time, so I didn’t know if I was late or early… I was so surprised to get that second serve (after the violation), it’s never happened to me before.”
“That one really distracted me from the match. It’s the first time I’ve had this situation with a time violation. This is my fourth year on the tour and it had never happened to me,” she admitted.
Source: CNN