The role-model effect in sport is a double-edged sword. In the best of times, it helps a sporting culture thrive where every generation finds inspiration from the previous and the champions’ ecosystem is constantly replenished. But it can also have adverse consequences, burdening the athletes of successive generations with a standard that is impossible to live up to.
Qinwen Zheng has flourished in the former setting. The 22-year-old from China has looked up to compatriot Li Na — 2011 French Open and 2014 Australian Open champion, the first Asian to win a Grand Slam singles title and be ranked as high as No. 2 in the world — and zoomed up the tennis charts, reaching a career-best WTA ranking of No. 5 on Monday.
Epochal triumph
Zheng started the year by reaching the Australian Open final and ended it with a highly creditable runner-up finish at the WTA Finals last week. Sandwiched in between was the epochal triumph at the 2024 Paris Olympics, where she became the first Asian tennis player, male or female, to win a singles gold medal.
“Li Na won her first Grand Slam, and I then started thinking that, ‘Oh, the Asian player can also do something good in tennis. This is such an international sport,’” Zheng said, describing the influence of her role model. “I think that she put a little seed in my heart that I also want to do it. I want to try to be like her, you know, and even better.”
Although there is still a lot of ground for Zheng to cover before she can think of emulating, and eventually surpassing, her idol Li Na, her ascent over the last three seasons has been nothing short of staggering.
She started 2022 outside the top-100, and by the end of it, was ranked in the top-30 and was named the WTA Newcomer of the Year. At the Pan Pacific Open (WTA 500) in Tokyo in September 2022, she even became the first Chinese teenager to reach a WTA Tour final.
That year, she won her debut matches at all four Slams, beat 2018 French Open champion Simona Halep on the Roland-Garros clay and picked a set off eventual winner Iga Swiatek. By the end of 2023, she was top-20, had won her first two Tour titles and earned the WTA’s Most Improved Player of the Year award.
Teenaged success can be a great illusion. But Zheng, who started tennis at the age of seven near Wuhan, China, and has been training in Barcelona since 2019, has honed and bettered her craft like how novelists do their prose between the first and last drafts.
Zheng has always had a powerful serve, delivered from the top of a five-foot, ten-inch frame, and a free-swinging, top-spin-heavy forehand. Her ace count has always been high — which, in women’s tennis, can be a game-changer — and in the event the serve was returned, her forehand would take centre-stage.
Lethal weapon: Zheng has a powerful serve, delivered from the top of a 5’10“ frame. | Photo credit: Getty Images
But the lack of consistency in landing her opening salvos was often her bane. In 2024, however, especially the second half, she has meticulously worked on bettering this aspect, focusing more on repeatability and accuracy.
Tour-leading server
The effect is that she has hit a tour-leading 445 aces from 68 matches this season, and won 75.7% of her first-serve points, which is better than any woman who has played more than a match. Her corresponding numbers for 2023 were 363 aces from 54 matches (fourth best) and 73.7% of first-serve points won (joint-top). Overall, her service-points-won metric has grown from 60.1% in 2023 to 62% in 2024.
Analyst Jeff Sackmann pointed out on his blog Tennis Abstract that Zheng’s backhand had also kept pace, postulating that it was “five times more effective [in 2024] than it was before”. As a result, Zheng now puts more returns in play and they are far from weak, which might have been the case earlier, incentivising opponents to target that wing.
The on-court results have mirrored this. Since losing in the first round at Wimbledon in early July, she has won the most matches on the WTA Tour — 31. Besides the gold medal in Paris, she defended her WTA 250 Palermo title, reached the quarterfinals of the US Open, the semifinals in Beijing (WTA 1000), the final in Wuhan (WTA 1000) and lifted the trophy in Tokyo (WTA 500).
In her maiden appearance at the WTA Finals in Riyadh, she beat two Wimbledon champions in Elena Rybakina and Barbora Krejcikova, and a two-time Slam finalist in Jasmine Paolini to make the final. In the summit clash against American Coco Gauff, she led 6-3, 3-1, and served for the championship at 5-4 in the deciding set only to display a mildly impatient streak and end up losing the tie in a tie-break.
“When you lose a match, there are lessons to learn,” Zheng said, after the final. “So I would say there are a lot of positive things here, because it was my first WTA Finals and I’m here [in the final]. But at the same time, I feel hurt to lose. But we will see. Maybe next time I will be better.”
Zheng’s exploits come at an interesting time for women’s tennis. There is still, admittedly, a significant amount of churn in the upper echelons, like the list of Wimbledon winners of the past few years will show, but there is also clear-cut evidence of a Tour-leading pack comprising Aryna Sabalenka, Swiatek and Gauff, and a mid-card that has the likes of Paolini, Rybakina and Jessica Pegula.
Closing the gap
Zheng is the latest entrant into the latter group that is expected to snap at the heels of the top trio in 2025. Though she has just won one of the 14 combined outings against Sabalenka, Swiatek and Gauff, there is nothing to suggest that Zheng cannot start closing the gap.
More to come: The 22-year-old Zheng, her coach Pere Riba believes, is at just ‘60% of what she can be’. | Photo credit: Getty Images
She beat four-time French Open champion Swiatek on the Polish star’s best surface — the Parisian clay — en route the Olympic gold, stretched Sabalenka to three sets in the Wuhan final last month and almost felled Gauff in Riyadh.
“If she continues improving, and given the way she is doing things, I’m optimistic,” Zheng’s Spanish coach Pere Riba told The National about her prospects of winning a Major. “It can happen or not happen, because many players are fighting for the same thing. But she has the tennis and the fitness.”
And to be the best in the world and be at the pinnacle of the WTA rankings, Zheng needs to continue to evolve, adjust and embellish, for the challenges from her peers will be akin to dealing with moving targets.
“I have a lot of confidence in Qinwen, because she has the tools, the weapons, and every month is better,” insisted Riba. “But if you analyse, we can see that Aryna and Iga are fighting a little bit more up from the other ones.”
“I don’t see that she’s at the top of her potential,” added Riba, who also coached Gauff to the US Open title in 2023. “She is at 60% of what she can be. And this gives me a lot of confidence that she’s going to be there one day. I really believe that.”
Published – November 16, 2024 12:01 am IST