WHAT HAPPENED: In 2022, Zheng Qinwen won the WTA Newcomer of the Year Award. The following year, she was named the tour’s most improved player. And earlier this summer, she captured the biggest title of her young career: capturing Olympic gold at the Paris 2024 Games.
So, following the Olympics, when Zheng returned home to discuss the future of her career with her father, the conversation was simple: It’s time to win a Grand Slam.
Wednesday afternoon, in a hot, breezy summer second-round match in the Grandstand, Zheng inched closer to that goal, rallying for a 6-7, 6-1, 6-2 victory over a dogged Erika Andreeva.
“When I saw my father in China [after the Olympics], he gave the next plan I have, which is Slams,” the 21-year-old said on court after the match. “But that was our dream since I was 10 years old. I don’t know if he pushes me more, I already fight so hard for my target. We’ll see what happens with the Slams, because you never know.”
It was an impressive comeback for Zheng against an opponent who entered the match playing her best tennis. The older sister of rising star and and 2024 French Open semifinalist Mirra Andreeva, 20-year-old Erika entered the Open ranked a career-best No. 75 in the world and upset American veteran Danielle Collins in Flushing’s first round.
She carried that momentum into Round 2, peppering the No. 7 seed with a steady diet of flat, angled ground strokes and feathery drop shots, forcing Zheng to run relentlessly on a day where the heat crested in the 90s. Andreeva pulled ahead 2-0 and 4-2 in the opening set, and while Zheng battled back each time, the Chinese star was never able to nose in front. That held true in the tiebreak as well, Andreeva running out to a 3-0 lead and claiming the frame, 7-3.
Zheng, who also dropped the first set in her opening-round win over Amanda Anisimova, held firm in the second set, finally gaining some distance behind a break that put her up 3-1 in the stanza. She continued to apply the pressure from there, turning up the volume as Andreeva lost a half-step and struggled with her focus.
The big difference in the second set, and throughout the remainder of the match, was Zheng’s serve. She hammered seven aces in the second set and won all 12 points when she got her first serve in play. With easy holds on her side, she was able to concentrate on Andreeva’s offering, converting 2-of-4 break-point chances and winning as many points on Andreeva’s serve as she lost (13 each).
A 10-minute heat break after the second set gave Andreeva a chance to regroup, but Zheng was relentless, finally converting on her seventh break point of the opening game, which ran an extended 12 minutes. From there, Zheng never looked back, breaking again for a 5-2 lead and closing it out, appropriately, with an ace, her 20th of the match.
In all, Zheng won 82% of her first serves and did not face a break point in either of the final two sets.
“I started the match quite slow, but little by little, I started to feel better,” Zheng said. “And [then I had] better reaction with my serve. Honestly today, I didn’t enter the match the way I wanted, but I still fight until the end and never give up, because she continued to have chances in the second set.”
She added: “I said to myself, keep fighting, even though it is a difficult day. The match is too hot, but the crowd is here suffering with me.”
WHAT IT MEANS: Wednesday’s win was the continuation of an outstanding 2024 campaign for Zheng, who staged her Grand Slam breakthrough at last year’s US Open, where she defeated reigning finalist Ons Jabeur before falling to eventual finalist Aryna Sabalenka in the quarterfinals. That success set the stage for 2024, with Zheng reaching the final at the Australian Open and, after an up-and-down clay-court season, taking her biggest title to date with a victory at the Paris Olympics, topping four-time Roland Garros champion Iga Swiatek en route.
It has not been an easy road thus far in New York, however. Wednesday’s three-set win stretched 2 hours, 28 minutes, which comes on the heels of Zheng's hard-fought first-round victory over Anisimova, an encounter that clocked in at 2 hours, 20 minutes.
Zheng’s third round could be a test as well: powerful German Jule Niemeier, the 2022 Wimbledon quarterfinalist who upset No. 32 seed Dayana Yastremska in the opening round and blitzed Japan’s Moyuka Uchijima in Round 2.
MATCH POINT: Zheng is pursuing both her first Grand Slam title and a place in the history books. A championship in Flushing Meadows would make her just the fourth woman to win the Olympics and the US Open in the same year, joining Stefanie Graf (1988), Venus Williams (2000), and Serena Williams (2012).
