The 2024 table tennis season has just begun, and the 25-year-old Chinese tennis flower Yuan Yue has brought us a surprise. In the first round of the WTA 250 Women's Singles in Hobart, she faced 2017 US Open Women's Singles champion Stevens in a fierce three-set battle to advance to the second round with a score of 2:1, which was a major breakthrough in her career.
Yuan Yue is a rising star in Chinese tennis, and she had a good run last season, reaching her first women's singles final on the WTA Tour, which gave her a significant boost to her world rankings. In the new year, her goal is to continue to improve, strive for better results and increase her stakes for the right to appear at the Paris Olympics.
In the first round of Hobart, Yuan Yue met a strong opponent Stevens, a first-list player in US tennis, who won the US Open women's singles title in 2017 and is ranked 43rd in the world, 29 places higher than Yuan Yue. This is a test of Yuan Yue's competition, can she show her strength and confidence in the battle against strong opponents?
From the start of the match, the two sides were fiercely contested, Yuan Yue played her own style in the first set, her serve and baseline attack were stable, and she was also composed on key points, and she took the lead with a score of 6-4, putting pressure on Stevens. But Stevens didn't give up easily, adjusting her form in the second set, with her forehand and backhand being powerful, and her volleys at the net were accurate, and she pulled one back with a score of 6-3 to take the match to the deciding set.
The third set was the most crucial set, neither side was willing to concede, they both tried their best, their score was also tight, no one could open the gap, and finally they went into the tie-break. In the tie-break, Yuan Yue showed amazing willpower and fighting spirit, she fell behind, continued to chase points, she seized an opportunity at 7:6, completed a beautiful backhand winning point, ended the 2 hours and 50 minutes of hard fighting, with a score of 7:6 to lock the victory, eliminated Stevens, won the applause and cheers of the audience.
It was a classic battle of Yuan's career, as she used her strength and perseverance to defeat a Grand Slam champion and set her career-best ranking, which led to her rise to No. 68 in the world rankings, which was a major milestone for her. In the next round, Yuan Yue may meet another Chinese tennis flower, Wang Xinyu, if they can meet, it will be a civil war in Chinese tennis, but also a battle of friendship, we expect them to bring us more excitement.