Venus Wins 47th Career Title In Wuhan (When Muguruza Retires Down 3-6 0-3)

Wow! Venus Williams has had a really great week. She began it with winning her 700th career WTA match by defeating Julia Goerges and followed that up with by winning one of the best matches of the year on the women's tour in the quarterfinals against Johanna Konta of Great Britain 6-4 3-6 7-5. But that was just the warm-up! Venus then had to face Roberta Vinci in the semifinals, the same Italian player who ended her sister Serena's chance to win the calendar grand slam in the semifinals of the U.S. Open a few weeks before. That was another hard fought match, with Venus saving a match point and winning in a 3rd set tiebreak 5-7 6-2 7-6(4) to reach the final of the Wuhan Open.

There she faced 2015 Wimbledon finalist Garbine Muguruza who had won an incredible match of her own (against Angie Kerber in the semifinals). Unfortunately for Garbine she injured herself getting past the plucky German, and she was unable to bring her best tennis to her match with Venus, and ended up retiring down 3-6 0-3.

So, Venus won her biggest WTA title in over 5 years, her 47th career tour title. She is now only the 9th person in the history of the WTA to win more than 700 matches (Serena is at #8 with 737 match wins). The title win will move her to #12 in the WTA rankings (Muguruza will jump to #5) but even more interestingly Venus could possibly qualify for the year-end championships in Singapore since she is currently at #9 and with Serena's absence from the tour for the rest of the year, the older Williams sister has a chance to make 2015 her best year on tour in quite awhile.