American Ann Li finished off a title run for the first time in four years on Sunday by defeating Lulu Sun 7-6(6), 6-2 for the crown at the Guangzhou Open.<\/p>\n
Guangzhou: Scores<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Draw<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Order of play<\/a><\/p>\n The 25-year-old was on a three-match skid in trophy tilts dating back to lifting the trophy at the WTA 250 in Tenerife, Spain in 2021 — including runner-up finishes at both Singapore and Cleveland this year as an unseeded player. Seeded No. 2 in Guangzhou, she took advantage of her lofty draw status to reach her sixth career final without the loss of a set, and continued that trend against 2024 WTA Newcomer of the Year Sun, the former World No. 39 who came through qualifying to reach her second career final.<\/p>\n Li was 0-2 against Sun in their all-time head-to-head previously, but wrestled away control of their third match by winning a tight first set that lasted more than an hour.<\/p>\n The American saved all five break points she faced in the first set — she faced at least one in four service games — and eventually flipped the script from 3-0 down in the tiebreak. She previously had four set points — two with Sun serving down 5-4, and another two on the New Zealander’s serve at 6-5 — but couldn’t convert them.<\/p>\n Li is the eighth American to win a singles title on the Hologic WTA Tour this year — and first to win in Guangzhou since Sofia Kenin took the 2019 title.\u00a0<\/p>\n Piter, Tjen win doubles title<\/p>\n In a doubles final between two unseeded teams, Poland’s Katarzyna Piter and Indonesia’s Janice Tjen came from a set down to defeat Eduice Chong of Hong Kong and Liang En-shuo of Chinese Taipei, 3-6, 6-3, [10-5].<\/p>\n Down 6-3, 3-3, the winning team went on a run of threes: first, capturing three straight games to take the match to a deciding tiebreak, and then winning the first three points of it to start the decider off strong. They never relinquished that lead, and from 4-3 ahead, they ran away with things by winning six of the last eight points.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"American Ann Li finished off a title run for the first time in four years on Sunday by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":242284,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747,83],"class_list":{"0":"post-242283","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-tennis","12":"tag-text"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242283\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/242284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}