On January 18, Beijing time, the 2022 Australian Open entered the second day of the main competition, and the 3 Chinese Jinhua who played on the first day all won the promotion, and now China's current world's highest ranking Zhang Shuai is playing, and she is facing the first round of the women's singles. In the end, Zhang Shuai defeated Grubic 2-0 on aggregate to advance to become the fourth Chinese Golden Flower player to advance to the second round of the Australian Open women's singles, and also entered the second round of the Australian Open after two years, winning the 30th singles win of his career Grand Slam.
Zhang Shuai was the only Chinese Golden Flower player to participate in all four Grand Slam tournaments last season, but her singles record last season was extremely bad, the Australian Open, French Open and Wimbledon were all women's singles rounds, and it was not until the US Open that she won the only Grand Slam singles victory. Zhang Shuai has twice reached the top 8 grand slam singles in her career, namely the 2016 Australian Open and the 2019 Wimbledon, while last year her partner Stosur won the US Open women's doubles title and the second Grand Slam women's doubles title in her career.
Zhang Shuai did not perform well in the warm-up match before the Australian Open, she suffered two consecutive defeats in singles, and the world ranking also fell out of the top 50. Zhang Shuai faced Swiss player Grubich in the first round of the Australian Open women's singles, Grubich reached the Wimbledon women's singles quarterfinals last year and won the Women's Doubles championship at the Tokyo Olympics, but Grubich's past career Australian Open main tournament is difficult to find.
Zhang Shuai and Grubic have met 3 times in their past careers, and Zhang Shuai is slightly inferior with 1 win and 2 losses. The two began their fourth meeting in their careers, with the two sides holding their own serves in the first two sets, Zhang Shuai saved in the 3rd set and completed the key break in the 4th to take a 3-1 lead. Zhang Shuai continued to maintain his serve in the 5th set and has extended to a 4-1 lead. Although Grubich then stubbornly counterattacked, Zhang Shuai successfully won the set in the 9th set and won the set 6-3.
Entering the second set, the two sides tied the first four sets to a 2-2 draw, Zhang Shuai completed the break again in the 5th set, and then successfully saved the 6th set, taking a 4-2 lead in the first six sets. Grubic completed the 7th set, and Zhang Shuai quickly returned to Baofa to continue to maintain a 5-3 lead. Grubich scored four straight runs in the 9th inning to win the unavoidable serve. Zhang Shuai successfully won the 10th set, thus winning another set 6-4, and finally swept the aggregate score 2-0 to advance to the second round.
(Text/Drunken Floating Life)