After ending tennis’ longest dropping streak for 52 years, China’s Zhang Shuai is making up for misplaced time.
The 595th-ranked 35-year-old ended a dire run of 24 successive defeats spanning greater than 600 days, at her residence match, the China Open, the place she has now made historical past.
Having overcome Sixty fifth-ranked American McCartney Kessler for her first win since January 2023, Zhang pulled off an enormous upset by beautiful US Open semi-finalist Emma Navarro to achieve the third spherical.
That made her the lowest-ranked participant to defeat a top-10 opponent within the match’s historical past, with 23-year-old Navarro ranked eighth on the earth.
Within the Open period just one girls’s participant has misplaced greater than Zhang’s 24 straight matches (excluding Billie Jean King Cup), when Madeleine Pegel did not win any of her first 29 matches within the early days of the tour from 1968 to 1972.
Zhang, the lowest-ranked participant to ever compete in the principle draw of the China Open – a WTA 1000 occasion, gained 6-4 6-2 in Beijing on Friday and can meet Twenty eighth-seeded Russian Anastasia Potapova or Belgium’s Greet Minnen subsequent.
The 2-time Grand Slam quarter-finalist had gained her most up-to-date match in opposition to a top-10 participant, beating quantity 10 Caroline Garcia in Tokyo in 2022.
Zhang’s profession has been stricken by accidents and she or he took a six month-break final yr, returning in Dubai in February.