Guo Hanyu saved three match points in Wuhan, then talked about her father

Guo Hanyu saved three match points on Tuesday in Wuhan and beat 12th seed Sorana Cirstea, 1–6, 7–6(6), 7–5. It took 2 hours and 41 minutes. She had lost the first set and trailed 4–0 in the second. Guo is 28, from Zhengzhou, and she came into the Wuhan Open as a wildcard ranked 240th in singles. In July she won the women’s doubles title at Wimbledon.

Cirstea, 36 and ranked 16th, had the match in her hands for a long time. She won the first set 6–1, took a double break for a 4–0 lead in the second, and served for it at 6–5. She did not hold. Guo saved three match points in the tiebreak and took the set. Cirstea led the third 5–3. Guo won the next four games. It was her second win at a WTA 1000, and the first time she has won a main-draw match on tour since last October in Jiujiang. By ranking, Cirstea is the best player she has beaten. Guo is also the lowest-ranked player to beat a top-20 opponent at this event since Wuhan began in 2014.

She thought that first set had ended it. She said the set was poor and that she had figured the match was already over. Mladenovic, her doubles partner, was courtside. The crowd kept cheering. She told herself she could not give up, and that she would stay out there as long as she could.

In the press conference she talked about her father. She learned after Wimbledon that he was seriously ill and in intensive care. She has played four tournaments since, singles and doubles together. She told reporters this in Mandarin, and she broke down while she said it. “It’s really difficult for me when I come back home. I try to accompany my dad, I try to do something about it. Knowing this actually made me feel quite helpless. I cannot just have a happy moment on the court and enjoy the game. I will always have a kind of sorrow, so that’s why I made a lot of efforts.”

The third set, she said, felt like another close loss arriving. “This kind of close loss is always painful. I always try to tell myself that I try to be myself and leave it to the fate. If God really wants me go for this in my tennis game all I can do is try my 100% on the court and see what is the result.”

The doubles title was a different week, and it was new for her. Kristina Mladenovic, a former doubles world No. 1 working her way back from injury, asked Guo to be her partner. They had not played a tournament together. They won Auckland the first week they did. At Wimbledon they were the 10th seeds. They beat the top seeds, Katerina Siniakova and Taylor Townsend, in the quarterfinals, then Gabriela Dabrowski and Luisa Stefani, the second seeds, 6–3, 7–5 in the final. Dabrowski and Stefani had won 18 sets in a row. Guo had never been in a major final. Three return winners broke them for 6–5 in the second set, the last of them a forehand from Guo. She then hit a volley winner to set up championship point. The WTA projected the title would put her ninth in doubles, her first time in the top 10. She is 15th in doubles now.

She has never won a WTA singles title. Her best singles ranking is No. 156. The other time she won a match at a 1000 was last summer in Montreal, where she came through qualifying, beat Yulia Putintseva for her first win over a top-50 player, and lost the next round to Iga Swiatek. She grew up in Zhengzhou picking up tennis balls for a cousin. She stayed in school at Southwest University, won a Universiade doubles gold in 2019, and in 2023 won the Universiade singles title while she finished a master’s degree. She had thought about quitting. In 2022 she started again with a coach in Shenzhen. The ranking that stuck was the doubles ranking. A wildcard was how she got into the singles draw in Wuhan.

Cirstea has said 2026 is her last season. This was her third main draw in Wuhan. She led a wildcard by a set and four games and had three match points in the tiebreak. Guo plays Katie Volynets next, an American who came through qualifying. The father she talked about is still in intensive care.