The second day of main-draw action at the Shenzhen Open continued to showcase powerful opening performances as Simona Halep and Maria Sharapova comfortably progressed into the second round and our photographer Jimmie48 documented everything in photos.
Halep needed just 69 minutes to kick off the 2018 season with a 6-4 6-1 victory over Nicole Gibbs, overcoming a sluggish start, but in terms of her on-court look the start of the new year is highly disappointing, as her contract with Adidas has now officially expired and, not having secured a new clothing sponsor, the world No.1 player is wearing no-name gear in her matches at the Shenzhen Open.
Sporting her winter Nike look debuted at the end of the previous season, in particular the Nike Winter Maria Premier Tank and the Nike Winter Maria Premier Skirt, Sharapova hit three aces and 18 winners to defeat Romanian Mihaela Buzarnescu 6-3 6-0 in 80 minutes on a packed Centre Court.
We also have photos of qualifier Danka Kovinic‘s victory over seventh seed Maria Sakkari, Zarina Diyas‘ triumph over Pauline Parmentier and Wang Yafan‘s win over Jasmine Paolini.
Stay with us tomorrow, as the remaining two singles first-round matches along with four second-round matches will be contested. Second seed Jelena Ostapenko will make her Shenzhen debut as she takes on Kristyna Pliskova. Moreover, Sharapova will play Alison Riske, who has made the finals in Shenzhen for two years running. We will also have an all-Romanian doubles encounter, as the partnership of Halep and Irina-Camelia Begu will face Irina Bara and Buzarnescu in an early doubles quarterfinal match on Tuesday.
MORE PHOTOS FROM THE 2018 SHENZHEN OPEN:
Love the photos, but as a reader of the blog using my mobile phone, the format is a bit frustrating. I have to scroll a lot to get to the article and the photos are rendered very tiny after clicking on them. Just wanted to leave this as a suggestion for the coming year as I had it in my mind for a while. Regardless, love the blog and have been reading it almost daily for over 10 years now!
Michael Cap, thank you so much for this insightful comment. I absolutely know what you’re talking about and I’ll do my best to fix the issue. What I can easily do is write the content above the photo gallery. Also, I’ve managed to tweak the interface to improve user-friendliness when you click on a single photo on your mobile device (the photo is now larger and you can swipe left and right, can you notice the difference?). What remains to be a problem is that on mobile devices the gallery shows only one photo per row and I’ll contact the developer of my website theme to check whether that can be fixed.
Thanks Marija! Regardless you do an amazing job so leep at it!!!
And yes you are right! I had not clicked on the pictures in a while as they used to be really small. Now it’s perfect!!!
I know MaSha is a good contender for the title. She has been doing well in China lately.
Michael Cap, I’m glad I’ve managed to make at least a slight improvement. I hope I’ll succeed in fixing all the issues, but I believe it will be a hard road, as the problem seems to be related to the responsive nature of my WordPress theme. I’ll do my best!
Michael Cap, I’ve managed to fix the gallery issue! Now three photos are showing per row even on mobile phones! Clap clap for me 🙂