Su-Wei Hsieh was in a relaxed mood as she saved match point to edge out Garbine Muguruza 3-6 7-6(1) 6-1 in Osaka.
The Wimbledon doubles champion claimed her second straight win over the Spaniard having saved match point in the contest.
After winning a tight second set, Hsieh cruised through the deciding set to secure a spot in the second round against Elise Mertens.
Even though this final part of the season can prove quite tiring, Hsieh is approaching in a more relaxed manner, “I know that anything can happen because this is almost the end of the year,” Hsieh said to the press after the win.
“I just want to be more relaxed, going more to my game. Sometimes I lose a little bit of rhythm at the beginning, so I just need to play more games to get the rhythm.
“In the second set, I felt a little bit more rhythm, and more stable myself, my personal style. It helped me a lot to get into the match and to get more game.”
As for Muguruza, this loss would have hurt her confidence a lot having not won a WTA match since June and her ranking slowly falling by the week.
Next for Hsieh will be US Open doubles champion Elise Mertens, where they have split their opening two meetings which came last season.
In other results today there were comfortable wins for Madison Keys and US Open quarter-finalist Donna Vekic over Daria Kasatkina and Caroline Garcia respectively.
Here is the second round line-up, which matches will be played across Wednesday and Thursday:
Naomi Osaka (1) v Viktoriya Tomova – Wednesday
Varvara Flink v Yulia Putintseva – Thursday
Sloane Stephens (3) v Camila Giorgi – Thursday
Su-Wei Hsieh v Elise Mertens (9) – Wednesday
Madison Keys (5) v Zarina Diyas – Wednesday
Nicole Gibbs v Angelique Kerber (4) – Wednesday
Donna Vekic (7) v Misaki Doi – Thursday
Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova v Kiki Bertens (2) – Thursday
