You could have been forgiven for getting whiplash from Zhang Shuai’s 6-2, 2-6, 6-3 upset of No. 14 seed Emma Navarro in the Dongfeng Voyah · Wuhan Open first round.
Though the match went to three sets, it lasted just 1 hour and 36 minutes in total. For comparison, the entire contest could have fit inside the second set alone of Barbora Krejcikova’s fourth-round US Open comeback against Taylor Townsend, which lasted 1 hour and 39 minutes. And while Krejcikova and Townsend packed all the drama into that classic knife-edge set, Zhang and Navarro delivered wild oscillations in momentum throughout.
Wuhan: Scores | Draws | Order of play
Zhang already had the experience of defeating Navarro on home soil, having defeated the American 6-4, 6-2 in the first round of Beijing just over a year previously. The 36-year-old picked up where she left off, swarming the net and rattling off five consecutive games from 1-0 down to take a 5-1 lead. Though Zhang required five set points to close out the opener, there was little sign of the rollercoaster ride ahead when she broke for 2-1 in the second set courtesy of a Navarro forehand error.
But the momentum swing was sudden and immediate. Navarro responded by racing through eight games in a row herself to go up 3-0 in the third set. The role reversal was an emphatic one. Improving her service efficacy and striking her forehand with relish, Navarro won an astonishing 32 out of 37 points in this passage of play.
Just as abruptly as Zhang had gone off the boil, the wild card turned up the heat again. Finding her form at net again, she won 12 out of 13 points to peg Navarro back to 3-3. The former US Open semifinalist held a 40-0 lead in the next game, but Zhang’s down-the-line winners were simply irresistible. Zhang denied her the hold with a run of five straight points, and ultimately 13 of the last 16 to seal a six-game run to victory. The result was her 23rd career Top 20 win — appropriately, the first since her prior defeat of Navarro.
Afterwards, Zhang credited her home crowd for spurring her on.
“In the final set when I got 0-3, all of you were giving me great energy to have a strong comeback, so thank you,” she said in her on-court interview.
No. 142-ranked Zhang will face either Sorana Cirstea as she bids to return to the Wuhan third round for the first time since 2018. The Romanian advanced after Jelena Ostapenko was forced to retire due to heat illness trailing 6-0, 2-1.