Laura Siegemund upsets Qinwen Zheng in 2nd round of Australian Open

MELBOURNE, Australia — Olympic champion Qinwen Zheng will not repeat her surprising run to the 2025 Australian Open final after a surprise second-round loss to world No. 97 Laura Siegemund on Wednesday.

Zheng lost the 2024 championship match at Melbourne Park to Aryna Sabalenka and won the Olympic gold medal in Paris and finished runner-up in the WTA Finals in a stellar season.

But his first tournament of the year ended in a 7-6 (3), 6-3 loss at John Cain Arena against 36-year-old Siegemund, who played aggressively from the first point and knocked Zheng out game.

Siegemund is the third-oldest player to beat a top-five WTA player at the Australian Open in the last 30 years. The only one older: Serena Williams, who did it at age 39 in 2021 (beat No. 2 Simona Halep) and at age 37 in 2019 (beat No. 1 Halep).

Two-time defending champion Sabalenka extended her winning streak to 16 at Melbourne Park by winning the last five matches to beat 54th-ranked Jessica Bouzas Maneiro 6-3, 7-5.

The score line did not indicate the difficulty of the match, with Bouzas Maneiro taking huge shots of the ball in her Australian Open debut and dictating some of the points against the world No. 1 player. Her serve let her down, with Sabalenka able to relieve some pressure on her own serve with five breaks.

No. 7 Jessica Pegula won 6-4, 6-2 over Elise Mertens to reach the third round, alongside Belinda Bencic and No. 23 Magdalena Frech.

Siegemund has never made it past the third round in Australia, but she gains confidence from her big surprise. Her only mistake was when she was broken serving in the first set. She recovered to dominate the tiebreaker, while Zheng remained too conservative in her tactics until the end.

“I knew I just had to play more than my best test. I had nothing to lose. I just told myself to break free,” Siegemund said. Zheng is “an incredible player. One of the best players around, but I know I can play well, and I wanted to show that.”

Siegemund became the first unseeded German to defeat a top-five seed at the Australian Open since 2003, when Marlene Weingartner ousted Jennifer Capriati in the first round.

ESPN Research and the Associated Press contributed to this report.