No.5 seed Zheng Qinwen got off to a strong start at the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix, racing past Sorana Cirstea 6-2, 6-3 in 76 minutes to advance to the second round for a second straight year.
Zheng played her first clay-court matches of the season last week, winning both of her singles rubbers in Billie Jean King Cup Group I action on home soil. The trip to Europe had been a long one, involving three legs from Changsha to Beijing, Beijing to Frankfurt and Frankfurt to Stuttgart, but Zheng showed no sign of jet lag to win a first-time encounter with 29th-ranked Cirstea.
"It was not easy, but I sleep on the plane, so the time passed fast," she explained in the on-court interview.
World No.7 Zheng will face either Indian Wells semifinalist Marta Kostyuk or former Stuttgart champion Laura Siegemund in the second round. She is bidding to win consecutive tour-level matches for the first time since reaching the Dubai quarterfinals in February.
Earlier, Dubai champion Jasmine Paolini also posted an emphatic first-round victory, dropping just one game to Italian compatriot and doubles partner Sara Errani to advance 6-1, 6-0 in just 46 minutes.
How Zheng defeated Cirstea: Zheng got off to a quick start in both sets, racing out to double-break leads of 3-0 in the first and 4-0 in the second in a flurry of winners. The 21-year-old's backhand was rock-solid and accounted for a substantial proportion of her 18 total winners, but she also delighted the crowd with her fine touch on the drop shot and a wonderfully angled pass in the second set.
With a hefty lead under her belt, Zheng suffered a slight dip in both sets; errant forehands in the first led to Cirstea getting on the board with two straight games, and the Romanian's power game began to click in the second as she won three in a row. But Zheng's insurance break proved crucial both times, and she righted the ship to close out both sets efficiently.
