Created on April 03, 2023 | 19:42
Reading time: 2 mins
Grabher was finally allowed to celebrate again on the WTA tour
Photo:
APA/EXPA/REINHARD EISENBAUER
Juila Grabher has defeated a player from the top 30 in the world tennis rankings for the first time. The 26-year-old from Vorarlberg won the first round match against the Chinese Zhang Shuai at the WTA 500 tournament in Charleston/USA on Monday with 6:4,1:6,6:3 and thus only her second main round match on the WTA tour this year. Zhang is ranked No. 28 in the world and was the No. 10 seeded in the clay court tournament in South Carolina.
Almost exactly three months after her first round victory in Auckland on January 2nd, Grabher was able to celebrate one of her most valuable victories. The number 89 in the world rankings got the first set after 33 minutes thanks to two breaks. In the second section, Austria’s number one gave up their serve to make it 1: 3 and then clearly gave up the set. In the deciding set, however, Grabher was always in control of the 34-year-old Chinese. A break to 3:1 and then safe service games were enough for success after 1:35 hours.
In the second round, Grabher meets the winner of the US duel between Kayla Day and Sachia Vickery.
At the sand tournament in Bogota, Sinja Kraus will probably face number eight seeded Argentinian Nadia Podoroska on Tuesday after qualifying, the Argentinean is a French Open semi-finalist in 2020.
