Qinwen Zheng reveals what qualities of Serena Williams made the American her inspiration from a young age
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Serena Williams and Qinwen Zheng
Chinese tennis player Qinwen Zheng is one of the most talented players on the WTA tour. She is also one of the most promising tennis players coming from China.
She made headlines this year when she reached the final of the Toray Pan Pacific Open Tennis Tournament in Tokyo. She played the final against Liudmila Samsonova and lost.
In an interview, Qinwen Zheng mentioned her tennis idols and also gave reasons for choosing them over others. She is very fond of Serena Williams.
“Anyway, when I was little I looked up to Serena Williams. I loved her style of play, her aggressive strokes, her charisma, her tremendous forehand. When a girl has that kind of power in the game, everything is so much easier. It doesn’t hurt if you also have fast feet, and besides her, I also looked up to Kim Clijsters,” she said.
She plays in basically the same manner as the former World No.1 since she stirs things up around town extremely hard and never abandons that strategy. She has a huge serve and exceptionally strong groundstrokes, making her generally perhaps one of the hardest rivals on the tennis circuit. Besides the American, she also looks up to Kim Clijsters and the Chinese legend Li Na.
“Of course, she [Li Na] took care of writing the history of Asian tennis, as she was the first to win the Big Four tournaments,” she further added.
This year she made her mark on the tennis circuit. In the future, expectations are quite high for her.
Qinwen Zheng’s fantastic season so far
Qinwen Zheng had a wonderful season this year. She started her season with an impressive performance in the Melbourne Summer Set 1 tournament. She reached the semi-finals, but could not beat Simona Halep in this match. She had to qualify for the Australian Open, but lost in the second round.
She then played in important tournaments such as the Indian Wells Open and the Miami Open. She participated in the French Open but could not pass on the challenge of Iga Swiatek in the fourth round. She won the WTA 125 tournament in Valencia. She participated in Wimbledon but was knocked out by eventual winner Elena Rybakina in the third round.
She defeated Rebecca Marino, Ons Jabeur, and Bianca Andreescu in the previous rounds to reach the quarter-final round of the Canadian Open. Here, she lost to Karolina Pliskova. She continued her count of making serious upsets in the US Open too, as she won against Jelena Ostapenko and Anastasia Potapova in the first and second rounds, respectively. She lost to Jule Niemeier of Germany in the third round.
She reached the final of the Toray Pan Pacific Open but could not win the title. In the San Diego Open, she defeated Garbine Muguruza before succumbing to Iga Swiatek in the second round. She finished the year as World No.25 in the WTA rankings.
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