A trophy-less Jankovic

Jelena Jankovic has been beaten in the Round of 16 in Tianjin Open by the local girl Zheng Saisai.

The 20-year old youngster won in the straight sets against the Serbian player who was given the first seed in the tournament.

There is a gap of 98 places between the rankings of Jankovic and Zheng. So, this can be considered a huge upset.

Jankovic has been trophy less this season. She would have come to China hoping for silverware, but, it wasn’t to be.

Zheng pushed Jankovic on the back foot in the opening game itself as she broke her serve to lead by 1-0.

But, the Chinese player could not build on that advantage as in the second game, she also lost serve and things were levelled.

But, Jankovic kept making mistakes on her serve and kept giving her opponent the breakthrough opportunities. With two more breaks in the set, Zheng sealed the opener.

Both the players started the second set in a circumspect way, but, in the 4^th game, Zheng took charge.

With some aggressive hits, the youngster was able to draw the first blood in the set. She, then, held her serve and broke for the second consecutive time i.e. in the 6^th game to make the score 5-1.

Jankovic reduced the margin a little bit with a late breakthrough in the 8^th game, but, a serve hold immediately after that did the trick for Zheng and she managed to secure probably her biggest victory ever.

Zheng’s opponent in the quarters would be Sorana Cirstea, a 24-year old from Romania, who is also ranked quite low in the world rankings, not as low as Zheng (no. 112) though.

Cirstea is just inside top 100. She is ranked 93^rd.