I know Lys is not as bad as some make her out to be' but to lose to her by such a scoreline should incentivise a career change. I suggest pastry tasting' Zhang's got some valuable experience under her belt now.

 

This girl is 17yo and is currently #836. What else she could do? She's just meeting a tennis professional probably for the first time in her career so far. The highlights of her career so far have been a 50k SF and a 75K R1 win, things that are way smaller than a match against a top 60 player would offer.

What is this bigass cross on the neck of Ruien though? I would not expect that from a Chinese girl.

 

 

OMG, I thought Lys destroyed Zhang Shuai......

 

Lys just doing unto Zhang what Iga did to Eva a few years back (I can't even recall seeing her play on the WTA level before that match), and now she has steadily climbed to #54 live ranking.

 

Ruien was such a strange main draw wildcard choice. Okay, she's a top 15 junior right now (also defending a lot of points from last year's Asian junior events, so she may not even be there year-end), but she hasn't done that well in junior slams and her pro tour attempts have been pretty bad this year. This would have made more sense in a year or two once/if she found her footing, a quali wildcard instead would have been sufficient here.

Then again, the hands are tied for the Chinese Tennis Association, as not much has worked out post Xinyu/Xiyu/Qinwen gen and Zhuoxuan Bai has been in the injury hell for more than a year now. It'd have been even worse if they didn't have off-form drops (Yuan, Xiyu) or injury layoffs (Zhu) to give wildcards to.