Zheng Qinwen described her US Open third-round comeback win over Madison Keys as a “very dramatic match” – but that is somewhat of an understatement.<\/b><\/p>\n
The Olympic champion, who had to come through qualifying to reach the main draw, found herself 5-0 and match point down in the third set against Keys.<\/p>\n
But Zheng held firm and reeled off seven games in a row to secure a remarkable 1-6 7-6 (7-3) 7-5 victory over the 22nd seed and crowd favourite. <\/p>\n
Keys, who won the 2025 Australian Open, appeared to be cruising towards a commanding victory after wrapping up the opening set in just 23 minutes.<\/p>\n
But Zheng, who is rebuilding her career after undergoing elbow surgery last year, rallied, clinching it on a tie-break before snatching victory from the jaws of defeat against the American.<\/p>\n
Zheng threw herself to the floor in relief and reflected afterwards on a difficult 12 months in which she has questioned if she will rediscover her form.<\/p>\n
“Finally, a bit of luck is on my side,” the 23-year-old said.<\/p>\n
“I am just telling myself ever give up. Somehow, little by little, it’s just happened.<\/p>\n
“Tennis sometimes feels like rollercoaster. You see many times people have a match point, but at the end we made a comeback.”<\/p>\n
The Chinese star is the first qualifier to reach the women’s fourth round at the US Open since Britain’s Emma Raducanu, who went on to win the 2021 title.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Zheng Qinwen described her US Open third-round comeback win over Madison Keys as a “very dramatic match” –…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":674614,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[9,10,18,13,14,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,7,8],"class_list":["post-674613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-eire","tag-featured-news","tag-featurednews","tag-headlines","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-latest-news","tag-latestnews","tag-main-news","tag-mainnews","tag-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117221217227780971","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=674613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674613\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/674614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=674613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=674613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=674613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}