Zheng Qinwen is out of the Australian Open after a shock defeat to Germany’s Laura Siegemund. Zheng, the No. 5 seed and last year’s beaten finalist, lost 7-6(3), 6-3 after her serve unraveled in the fourth game of the second set.
Zheng, who had got the match back on serve from 0-2 down, received a time violation from umpire Thomas Sweeney before serving two double faults to go down 3-1. Siegemund, 36, held her nerve from then on to knock out one of the star players of 2024.
Siegemund’s variety and disruptive baseline rhythm drew a scratchy performance from Zheng throughout the first set, but the 22-year-old, who won Olympic singles gold in Paris this summer, used her serve to good effect in tight moments. She hit seven aces and just one double fault, winning game point with an ace or unreturned serve on multiple occasions. She then hit four and two aces and double faults in the second set respectively, both of the latter in the game that decided the match.
Zheng, who rethrows her serve toss more frequently than most players, did so on multiple occasions throughout the match despite the surety of her serve when her motion was fluid. It was Siegemund who ended with the superior performance on serve, landing 80 percent of her first serves to Zheng’s 56 percent and winning 69 percent of points behind them against 64.
The deciding factor was forced errors, with Siegemund stretching Zheng often enough to extract 31 errors from her opponent while conceding just 13.
Siegemund nervelessly held her own serve at 5-3, using the drop shots and off-speed slices that had carried her so well. One last chipped short ball into the middle of the court curtailed a baseline rally she was behind in, giving Zheng no angle. She clipped a drop shot into the tramlines and Siegemund fell to the floor in delight.
‘The biggest upset of this year’s Australian Open’
Analysis from tennis writer Charlie Eccleshare
Zheng’s exit will leave a big hole at this year’s Australian Open. She’s an extremely popular player here with the large Chinese population in Melbourne, and introduced herself to a wider audience with her run to last year’s final.
She was beaten on that occasion by Aryna Sabalenka, and the world No. 1 looks like being one of the big beneficiaries from Zheng’s early exit at this year’s event.
The pair were seeded to meet in the quarterfinal, but instead the highest seeds Sabalenka could meet in the last eight are either Diana Shnaider (No. 21) or Donna Vekic (No. 18).
For Zheng, the defeat will mean a drop in the rankings from No. 5 to No. 7, or possibly lower depending on the results of the players just below her. Given her ranking and run here last year, this is the biggest upset of this year’s Australian Open so far.
(David Gray / AFP via Getty Images)
