Sun battles through to first WTA 250 semifinal of the year

Lulu Sun has fought back from being a set down to beat America’s Caty McNally in the quarterfinals of the WTA 250 tournament in Guangzhou, China.

Sun won the match 3-6 6-3 6-4 in one hour, 57 minutes, to make this the fifth time this year she’s won a match after losing the first set, while this victory makes it 12 wins from her last 14 matches since the US Open.

The Kiwi had six break points in the first set of this match, but it was McNally who got the only break in it.

Sun then got the solitary break of serve in the second set.

At deuce and 2-2 in the deciding set, Sun landed a peach of a return at full stretch to her right to hit a winner, then on the next point, crushed a crosscourt backhand to take the game.

With McNally serving at 3-5, Sun had a match point, but went slightly too long when attempting to put a forehand winner into the corner.

In the following game, Sun raced out to a 40-0 lead for three more match points. However she wasn’t able to convert any of them as McNally got the game back to deuce.

Sun won the next point with an ace and thought she had clinched the match with another ace on her fifth match point. But after pumping the air with her fist, the umpire said the serve had clipped the net cord. 

Sun was able to regather her composure and eventually took the match when McNally overhit the ball at the end of a long rally.

The win puts Sun into the semifinal of a WTA 250 level tournament or above for the first time this year.

In that semifinal, she will play against the winner of the match between Claire Liu from the States, who is ranked 305, and the world No 96 Ella Seidel from Germany.

But by getting this far, Sun should have already done enough this week to get herself back into the top 100 in the world rankings.