Cho Yoon-jeong "What a Good Player!"

It was a satisfied game.

A loser was satisfied with her game, but a winner felt relieved. 20000 spectators gave enthusiastic encouragement to persistence efforts of the Asian player of the small body.

The Round 3 of Women`s Singles, US Open (total prize of USD 16.17 million) held in Flushing, New York US, on September 1. Cho Yoon-jeong (23·Samsung Securities) who was 106 place of the world ranks, was defeated by Monica Seles (29·US) who was the runners-up by a score of 1-2(1-6,7-5,3-6).

Cho Yoon-jeong failed to advance to the fourth round like Lee Hyung-taek (Samsung Securities) who advanced to the fourth round of Men’s Singles in 2000. However, through this game, she secured a foothold for future success. While the US CBS broadcasting and Hong Kong Star TV were relaying lively, it could show her strong impression throughout the world. In a telephone interview, Cho Yoon-jeong said, “I am confident in matching any player. I will challenge a big game again after having a physical strength and strengthening my serve.”

At that day, Cho Yoon-jeong had the game on 33-34 of errors with Seles who had 9 championships in the major games. Also, she had the consecutive 7 games during match.

Cho Yoon-jeong who obtained the prize of 36,500 dollars (approx. 47 million won) owing to the advance of 32 rounds will rank high within 80th place, by adding the ranking points of 14p points.

After returning home on September 2, Cho Yoon-jeong will participate in POLO OPEN (September 9∼15, Shanghai China) and TOYOTA PRINCESS CUP (September16∼22,·Tokyo Japan), and then will challenge a golden medal of Busan Asian Games at the end of the month.

In the match held in Authur Ashe Stadium, the game center court which could accommodate 22,647 people, Cho Yoon-jeong seemed flinched from a size of the stadium and noise for the first time. She was behind by the score of 1-6 in the first set and 1-5 in the second set. However, she didn’t give up and so she won two sets by the score of 7-5 through powerful stroke. Seles was unstinting in her praise of the powerful Down-The-Line of Cho Yoon-jeong. Cho Yoon-jeong played the equal game in an early stage of the last third set, but lost a chance to break the serve game of Seles in the store state of 2-3. She failed to follow up Seles.

Besides, the top-ranking Seeds players such as Venus Williams, Jeniffer Caprioti (US) and Martina Hingis (Switzerland) advanced to the fourth round.

Jong-Seok Kim kjs0123@donga.com