{"id":799552,"date":"2026-07-14T11:00:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-14T11:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/799552\/"},"modified":"2026-07-14T11:00:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-14T11:00:13","slug":"wta-zheng-qinwen-notches-first-round-upset-at-athens-open","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/799552\/","title":{"rendered":"WTA: Zheng Qinwen notches first-round upset at Athens Open"},"content":{"rendered":"

Zheng Qinwen of China plays a backhand against Katerina Siniakova of Czech Republic during their first round women’s singles match at the Wimbledon Tennis Championships in London, June 29, 2026. (PHOTO \/ AP)<\/p>\n

Unseeded Zheng Qinwen of China pulled off a first-round upset, sweeping No 6 seed Jessica Bouzas Maneiro of Spain 7-5, \u200b6-1 on Monday at the Athens Open.<\/p>\n

Zheng, who collected \u200cseven aces to zero for Bouzas Maniero, saved 6 of 7 break points and converted 4 of 7 break points in the one-hour, 49-minute \u200bmatch. After breaking Bouzas Maniero to close out a \u200bhard-fought first set, Zheng broke her opponent twice in \u2060the second set and cruised to victory.<\/p>\n

In another upset, unseeded \u200bMai Hontama of Japan upended No 8 seed Magda Linette of \u200bPoland 6-4, 7-5, breaking Linette’s serve three times in each set.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Other first-round winners included Athens native and No 4 seed Maria Sakkari, No \u200b5 seed Sara Bejlek of the Czech Republic, American Alycia \u200bParks, Austria’s Lilli Tagger, Elena Micic of Australia and Great Britain’s Harriet Dart.<\/p>\n

ALSO READ: Zheng Qinwen, Wang Xinyu into second round at WTA Bad Homburg Open<\/a><\/p>\n

Iasi \u2060Open<\/p>\n

In the first round of the clay-court tournament at Iasi, Romania, No 2 seed Petra Marcinko of Croatia outlasted Argentine wild card Nadia Podoroska 6-2, 3-6, 6-4.<\/p>\n

Marcinko saved an impressive 16 \u200bof 19 break \u200bpoints, including all \u2060eight in the decisive third set, while converting half of her eight break-point opportunities to avoid \u200ban early upset. Podoroska collected three aces to \u200bnone \u2060by Marcinko, while both players committed eight double faults.<\/p>\n

No 7 seed Anna Bondar of Hungary swept wild card Sara Sorribes Tormo of \u2060Spain \u200b7-5, 6-4, while Armenia’s Alina Charaeva cruised \u200bpast Victoria Jimenez Kasintseva of Andorra 6-0, 6-1 and French wild card Clara \u200bBurel outlasted lucky loser Varvara Lepchenko 2-6, 7-5, 6-3.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Zheng Qinwen of China plays a backhand against Katerina Siniakova of Czech Republic during their first round women’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":799553,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[37754,64,63,85,747,2637,136926],"class_list":["post-799552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-athens-open","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-wta","tag-zheng-qinwen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799552","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=799552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799552\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/799553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=799552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=799552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=799552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}