Samantha Stosur battles past Jie Zheng into title match – HP Japan Open 2011
Australian International, Samantha Stosur, locked horns with the Chinese International, Jie Zheng, in the semi-final of the HP Japan Open contested in Osaka, Japan on Sunday October 16th. The fourth meeting between the
two tennis stars ended with the triumph of the World No.6, Stosur. It was an epic match and probably one of the best of the tournament; lasted for two hours thirty-six minutes with a victory for the Australian star with a score of 7-6(5), 3-6 and 6-3.
Stosur is enjoying the prime of her career on the courts having won seven of her last nine encounters whilst her opponent had won six of the last nine. The difference in ranking definitely favoured the Australian but considering
a heroic comeback from Zheng in the quarter-final against the fourth seed Petra Cetkovska, no one could write-off the chances of the Chinese International.
First set started off in a great fashion as both players were capitalizing on their serves and winning their games. The neck to neck contest continued till the third set before the Zheng broke Stosur’s serve to take the two games
lead in the set.
The comeback from the top seed was world class who won the next three games to take the score to 5-4 in her favour. Then Zheng bounced back breaking her opponent’s serve and taking the lead 6-5 before Stosur forced the set to enter
into a tie-breaker.
World No.4 held her nerves and surmounted the Zheng in the final tie-breaker and pocketed the first set with an ace and 43 total points, overcoming the Chinese with just a difference of a single point.
Trailing one set down, the 28-year-old came back strong and conquered the top seed match favourite in a comprehensive manner. She didn’t allowed the 27-year-old to win a single break point whilst helping herself to win two break
points and pushed the match into the third set by winning 56% of the total points in the second set.
The third set was nicely poised until the third game of set before Australian came up with an all round onslaught on the Chinese, thumping her on her own serves. World No.6 broke her opponent’s serve thrice and won 28 points out
of the total of 48 played. Chinese didn’t have a backup plan for this onslaught from the Australian and lost the final set 3-6 to the top seed.
This result takes creates a perfect draw for the final, top seed Samantha Stosur getting head to head with second seeded Marion Bartoli.
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