Zheng Qinwen gives Beijing a National Day celebration to remember

The Chinese National Day brought a day of celebration and a well-earned holiday across the country. In Beijing, Zheng Qinwen still had work to do before she could join the festivities.

The 2024 Olympic gold medalist and Chinese star didn’t play perfectly, but she lifted her game at the perfect time, dominating the third set in a 7-6 (8), 4-6, 6-2 first-round victory over fellow Chinese player Shi Han on the Diamond Court.

And after three hard-fought sets in nearly three hours, Zheng finally had reason to celebrate.

“I mean, I wish to have a longer holiday too, sometimes,” Zheng joked in her post-match presser. “I’m just happy all the people came to see us.”

Zheng’s holiday will have to wait as she booked her spot in the second-round against Anna Kalinskaya on Saturday.

Zheng donned a bright red Nike kit for the National Day match.

“I wanted a red dress because red is positive energy, it brings me energy and power,” she said. “At the time, I wasn’t thinking I’d be wearing it on National Day. It fit very well.”

After Zheng escaped with a win in a chaotic first set that ended in tiebreak, Shi bounced back in the second by capitalizing off a single break.

In the third set, everything clicked. Zheng went from winning only 56 percent of her first serves through the first two sets to 91 percent in the third. She never faced a break point in the decisive set. She also won 53 percent of return points in the third, compared to 33 percent in the second.

“Honestly, before the match I hadn’t served for many days, so I had to find my serve during the match,” Zheng said. “It was quite challenging. But after arriving in the third set, I started to see that I was really getting better.”

While Zheng can rest easy for the holiday, she’ll have to clean up a lot of the errors and service issues if she wants to go deeper into the tournament. 

“I didn’t change my rhythm like how I used to play, because I’m also trying to be more aggressive, so this caused more unusual mistakes,” Zheng said. “I was more patient, was willing to change up my speed and rhythm and I was moving forward and backward. I was able to be more aggressive, that was the key to this match.”

By Jackson West