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Zheng makes astonishing recovery to win 7-5, 6-3
is simple: do not, by any means, lead 5-0 against Zheng Qinwen. No scoreline is as hazardous. On Friday, the former Australian Open champion Madison Keys learned this lesson the hard way as she led Zheng 5-0 in the final set of an intense tussle before Zheng, the Olympic gold medallist, rolled through seven consecutive games to win the match.
Somehow, two days later, Zheng repeated the trick in her very next set against a greater opponent. Down 5-0 in the opening set of her fourth-round match against the six-time grand slam champion, Zheng again locked down her game and reeled off seven games in a row to take the set.
Zheng refused to let it go as she pulled off one of the best wins of her career, reaching the quarter‑finals of the US Open with a 7-5, 6-3 victory. This was a remarkable turn of events for a wide variety of reasons. A player winning seven games in a row from 0-5 down in consecutive sets against two different opponents is almost unheard of at the highest level; doing so against two grand slam champions has never happened before.
“In one moment, I even forgot the score in the first set at 4-5,” Zheng said. “That shows how I am focused. I guess, to come back 0-5 is not lucky, that’s I can say. ”Irish Open at Doonbeg: What are the tee times?
When is it on TV? When is Donald Trump going to be there? Tackling the elephant in the room: Can Sam Prendergast build a robust case for his defence? Swiatek was one of the tournament favourites after winning her first title of the year at the Canadian Open and she seemed to be on the way to rediscovering the confidence that has marked her as the greatest player of her generation.
However, as soon as she lost control in the first set, Swiatek’s game unravelled in a stream of erratic unforced errors. While the Pole cited difficulties with anxiety and stress as reasons for her recent troubles, here she just could not feel the ball well enough.
“I wouldn’t say it had anything to do with mentality. It was more that I started making mistakes from easy balls and Qinwen stopped doing mistakes,” she said. Most importantly, this is a transformative result for one of the biggest talents on the tour.
Coming into this match, Zheng had defeated Swiatek just once in their eight meetings, but that was a devastating loss for the Pole as it came in the semi‑finals of the 2024 Paris Olympics at Roland Garros, where Swiatek had won her third consecutive French Open title just months earlier. Along with her Olympic gold medal, which instantly established her as one of the most famous athletes in China, Zheng reached the 2024 Australian Open final and rose to a career high ranking of No 4 last year.
However, the 23-year-old underwent elbow surgery and tumbled down the rankings. Things have been incredibly difficult since. Zheng fell as low as No 160 in June and has struggled to find rhythm. Coming here, her 2026 record was 11-13.
Her US Open is testament to how quickly things can come together in tennis, and after starting off this tournament having to park her ego and drop down to compete in the qualifying draw, seven wins in New York have allowed Zheng to re-establish herself as a genuine contender. Meanwhile, the fifth seed and French Open champion, Mirra Andreeva, reached the quarter-finals at Flushing Meadows for the first time with a 5-7, 6-4, 6-3 win over her fellow Russian Anastasia Potapova.
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