World No. 1 Iga Swiatek of Poland swept past China's Zheng Qinwen on Thursday in the second round of the tennis WTA 500 Stuttgart Grand
The defending champion used one hour and 26 minutes to defeat the Chinese rising star 6-1, 6-4, extending her unbeaten run in Stuttgart to five matches.
Playing in her first match in 45 days, Swiatek came back strongly from her injuries and hardly missed a beat to extend her head-to-head record over Zheng to 3-0. The Pole broke the reigning WTA Newcomer of the Year twice in each set to wrap up a straight-set win.
"She's really talented, and everybody can see that," Swiatek said. "I need to adjust, and I'm just happy that I was focused on myself, on what I wanted to do ... and I feel pretty comfortable."
The 20-year-old Chinese talent told Xinhua that she was dissatisfied with her performance and made some unexpected mistakes.
"I lost points too quickly and made too many backhand errors, especially in the first set. The first serves were not good as well. I tried to fight back from 2-4 in the second set and that was too late," said Zheng.
"Facing the top player like Iga, I have to deliver the best performance from the very beginning. But today I felt a bit nervous and I was not in the best physical condition. I feel like my moves are a bit slower. It's hard to overturn the match when falling behind."
Swiatek moves through to a quarterfinal match against former World No. 1 Karolina Pliskova. The Czech outlasted Donna Vekic of Croatia in two hours and 20 minutes through a tiebreak in the third-set to advance.
"I felt like I need to be 100% focused from the beginning to the end, to think about technique and tactics," Swiatek said. "I'm pretty happy that I'm not rusty and I could perform good tennis, even though I had a break."
