French Open: China’s No 1 Zhang Zhizhen stirs hope of debut French Open as women struggle in qualifying
- Former junior No 1 Wang Xiyu is only Chinese woman to reach second round of qualifying at Roland-Garros as six others lose
- Wang Qiang reclaims top spot for Chinese women’s singles players after reaching Emilia-Romagna final, where she lost to Coco Gauff
China’s No 1 men’s singles tennis player Zhang Zhizhen has reached a career best second qualifying round at the French Open after beating Italy’s Lorenzo Giustino over three epic sets on Tuesday.
Shanghai-born Zhang is now two games from a debut appearance at the Roland-Garros slam.
Zhang, who also reached the second round of qualifying at the Australian Open this year, has long been tipped to make the breakthrough for Chinese men’s tennis.
Back in 2019 Andy Murray and Dominic Thiem were impressed with his performance at the China Open in Beijing, with Thiem tipping him to crack the world top 100. His career best No 136 is the highest achieved by a Chinese player in the men’s singles ranking.
Zhang faces Germany’s Peter Gojowczyk later today. The world No 134 overcame France’s Alexandre Muller after losing the first set. While the German took a little over 90 minutes to go through, Zhang took just short of three hours to overcome Giustino.