{"id":219183,"date":"2026-01-06T06:29:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-06T06:29:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/219183\/"},"modified":"2026-01-06T06:29:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-06T06:29:08","slug":"venus-williams-exits-asb-classic-in-first-round-after-loss-to-magda-linette","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/219183\/","title":{"rendered":"Venus Williams exits ASB Classic in first round after loss to Magda Linette"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cShe pushes you to the spot you don\u2019t want to be and that\u2019s where I was for a while. I\u2019m glad that I managed to refresh and come back with a little bit better game, especially from the baseline. A little bit smarter serving, and I\u2019m glad I used what I could use to win today. Massive congrats to her for the preparation, because it was a really good match.\u201d<\/p>\n

Williams made the final in her maiden Auckland appearance against Ana Ivanovic in 2014. She went one better and won the title a year later, coming back from a set down to beat Caroline Wozniacki in the finale.<\/p>\n

Williams showed fight in the first set today, fighting from 5-2 down to 5-4 before Linette closed it out.<\/p>\n

The American used her powerful forehand stroke in the second, which she clinched 6-4. The Pole comfortably won the decider, 6-2.<\/p>\n

Williams yesterday lost her first-round doubles encounter alongside singles top seed Elina Svitolina. The experienced pair were trumped by 20-year-old Filipino Alexandra Eala and 18-year-old American Iva Jovic in straight sets.<\/p>\n

Nathan Limm<\/a> has been a journalist with Newstalk ZB and the NZ Herald since 2020. He covered the Netball World Cup in Cape Town in 2023, hosts The Big League Podcast<\/a> and commentates rugby and netball for Gold Sport.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cShe pushes you to the spot you don\u2019t want to be and that\u2019s where I was for a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":219184,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[74,25286,3952,1558,4915,3544,5904,1888,78,120,132163,2225,132162,111,139,69,18833,7812,213,2044,61,5495,13971],"class_list":["post-219183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-after","tag-asb","tag-aucklands","tag-been","tag-classic","tag-exits","tag-final","tag-first","tag-in","tag-likely","tag-linette","tag-loss","tag-magda","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-round","tag-seen","tag-sports","tag-time","tag-to","tag-venus","tag-williams"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219183\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/219184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}