Venus Williams, the top seed at the WTA Elite Trophy Zhuhai, moved on to the semifinals with the win today. She survived another scare after losing the first set to Saisai Zheng of China. After a slow start, Williams found her rhythm and won fifteen of the last eighteen games in the match: 4-6, 6-1, 6-1. The American also dropped the first set to Madison Keys in the opening match but went on win that match as well. The seven-time Grand Slam champion has two titles to her credit in 2015 (Wuhan in October and Auckland in January). This was Saisai Zheng’s first match in this round-robin stage. Zheng, the wild card recipient, is currently ranked 75. She has one top twenty win in her career stunning Jelena Jankovic at Tianjin in 2014. The twenty-one year old from China had good results in September: winning the WTA125K Dalian event and reaching the quarterfinals at the Tokyo International and Guangzhou. However, she came into Zhuhai having lost five matches in a row.
In their first ever encounter, the number one Chinese player did not seem intimidated by Willaims’ experience and power. Zheng is an all-court player and showed a great variety in her shots (two-handed backhands, slice backhands, slice approach shots and drop shots), had good movement and looked for opportunities to charge the net. However, she possesses a relatively weak serve and William’s was able to capitalize on that as the match progressed. As Williams said in the post match court interview, Zheng played so well in the first set, deserved the wildcard, and there are great thing for her in the future.
Zheng got off to a great start and quickly went up 5-1 in the first set. She took balls early and attacked the short balls putting pressure on the world number 11. On the other hand, Williams’ serve was very shaky early in the mach. She was broken at love on the fourth game to go down two breaks. The momentum shifted to Williams’ favor towards the end of the set with the American winning three straight games to get to 4-5. To the crowd’s delight, Zheng was able to close out the set in a close tenth game. In the set, Williams made only 58% of her first serves compared to 76% for Zheng. Williams won a low 52% of her service points versus 57% for Zheng.
Williams found her form in the second and third sets. Zheng was not able to stay with Williams nor apply pressure on her as Zheng did in the first set. Williams took the first five games of the second set with improved, big serving, powerful forehands, pushing Zheng around the court, and fantastic net coverage. Zheng held in the sixth game aided by groundstroke errors by Williams. Williams then held at love to close out the set. The American bettered her first serve percentage to 86 compared to 41% for Zheng. Williams did not face a breakpoint in the set.
The third set stared with Williams breaking Zheng’s serve easily in the first game followed by a comfortable hold with two service winners and two forehand winners. Four errors cost Williams the third game, however she won the rest of the games in the decider. Zheng kept the games close and defended well, but was not hitting as freely as she had done in the first set and could not handle Williams’ big serving and power hitting. Williams saved both of the breakpoints she faced in the set and won 86% of her first service points. Zheng faced seven breakpoints (saving four of them) and had a first serve percentage of 53.
Williams could move into the top eight to start 2016 if she goes on to win this tournament. She was very happy to move on to the semifinals saying, “(There) were no easy matches. It was wonderful to play in front of this crowd and feel the support for both players. I am excited for Saturday!”
