The first week of 2019 was very successful for Arina Sobolenko.
At the tournament in the Chinese Shenchzhene with prize money of 750,000 dollars 20-year-old Belarusian tennis player in quarterfinals beat former top-ranked Russian Maria Sharapova. On 5 of January she made small feat - won the semi-final, and after two hours in three-set match beat fresher rival.
The Chinese rains forced to shift the matches so that the two crucial stages of the tournament took place on Saturday, one by one.
And if Arina spent her semifinal from bell to bell against the hostess of the court Yafan Wan, then Alison Risk took the first set at zero, and in the second her opponent Russian Vera Zvonareva refused to continue the match:
Arina Sobolenko (Belarus) - Yafan Wang (China): 6: 2,6: 1 (the beginning of the match on January 5 at 04.10).
Alison Risk (USA) - Vera Zvonareva (Russia): 6: 0.1: 0 (the beginning of the match on January 5 at 04.10).
So the American came to the finals with great strength and won the first set against Belarusian: 6: 4. Arine was not helped by the traditionally triggered call of his coach Dmitry Tursunov to the court.
The second set, Arina, started confidently: the 13th World Racket even took the opponent's pitch, but the subsequent 8 consecutive losing draws returned equality in the game. Tursunov reappeared in front of a tiebreaker on the ramp. He advised Arina to use blows with higher rebound, calm down, distract from thoughts that distract her and act more actively, and not wait for the opponent's mistake. Apparently the words had an effect and the tie-break was left for Sobolenko.
In the third set, the advantage of Belarus was indisputable:
Arina Sobolenko (Belarus) - Alison Risk (USA): 4: 6,7: 6,6: 3 (the match starts on January 5 at 08.10.
Congratulations to Belarusian tennis player with the first trophy in 2019 and wish her success at Sydney next week.
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