Chinese tennis star Zheng Qinwen secured an upset over No 6 seed Jessica Bouzas Maneiro of Spain in straight sets at the Athens Open on Monday.<\/p>\n
Currently ranked No 135 in the world, a free fall of 131 places from her career-high world No 4 spot last June, Zheng dispatched the 23-year-old in the first round, but it was not smooth sailing.<\/p>\n
In her first hard court appearance of the season, Paris Olympic champion Zheng almost lost a 3-0 lead in the opening set, allowing the world No 62 Bouzas Maneiro to level the match at 5-5.<\/p>\n
From there, Zheng won seven games on the bounce, taking the first set and building a healthy lead in the second.<\/p>\n
Bouzas Maneiro held serve for the first time in the second set before pushing Zheng hard in the seventh game.<\/p>\n
The Spaniard managed four break points but Zheng fended them all off, and then sealed the match with her fourth match point, winning 7-5, 6-1 in one hour and 49 minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chinese tennis star Zheng Qinwen secured an upset over No 6 seed Jessica Bouzas Maneiro of Spain in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1090806,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4105],"tags":[1151,297850,4723,297852,1395,1450,150725,53119,297851,19438,297853,79,1068,16,15,5067,297849,5069,47370],"class_list":["post-1090805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-athens","tag-athens-open","tag-australian-open","tag-bouzas-maneiro","tag-china","tag-greece","tag-hubei","tag-jessica-bouzas-maneiro","tag-micic","tag-olympic-games","tag-paris-olympic","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-us-open","tag-womens-tennis-association","tag-wta","tag-zheng-qinwen"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116924244934294952","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1090805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1090805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1090805\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1090806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1090805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1090805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1090805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}