{"id":19467,"date":"2026-06-15T14:02:26","date_gmt":"2026-06-15T14:02:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/19467\/"},"modified":"2026-06-15T14:02:26","modified_gmt":"2026-06-15T14:02:26","slug":"chinas-zheng-qinwen-says-she-needs-to-start-from-scratch-as-she-beats-first-round-hoodoo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/19467\/","title":{"rendered":"China\u2019s Zheng Qinwen says she needs to \u2018start from scratch\u2019 as she beats first-round hoodoo"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chinese tennis star Zheng Qinwen said she had to \u201ccalm down, take it slow and start from scratch again\u201d amid a temporary change in her back-room staff as she made a winning start at the Nottingham Open on Monday.<\/p>\n

The former world No 4, who had suffered three opening-round defeats in seven tournaments this year, beat sixth seed Maria Sakkari of Greece 4-6, 7-6, 6-4 in the first round as she builds up to Wimbledon later this month.<\/p>\n

She will next face the winner of the match between Australia\u2019s Talia Gibson and Britain\u2019s Francesca Jones.<\/p>\n

With her long-term coach Pere Riba still recovering from a car accident, Zheng said it would take time for new coach Albert Costa to gel with her coaching team, and the win provided an encouraging start.<\/p>\n

\"FormerFormer French Open champion Albert Costa started coaching Zheng Qinwen again last month. Photo: Reuters<\/p>\n

\u201cRiba is still recovering from the accident, as we all know, and he needs more time,\u201d said Zheng, who is ranked No 122 now. \u201cI don\u2019t know exactly how long it will take, but based on what he told me so far, it\u2019s about two or three months.\u201d<\/p>\n

Working with Costa for a second time since late May, Zheng said she felt good training with the 2002 French Open champion, but admitted any improvement would take a while.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chinese tennis star Zheng Qinwen said she had to \u201ccalm down, take it slow and start from scratch…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19468,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[7679,2974,2352,7026,207,7653,7680,4130,6599,254,7678,220,414,28,1996,5054],"class_list":["post-19467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-french-open","tag-albert-costa","tag-car-accident","tag-china","tag-eastbourne-open","tag-french-open","tag-greece","tag-hubei","tag-maria-sakkari","tag-nottingham-open","tag-paris","tag-pere-riba","tag-roland-garros","tag-rome","tag-tennis","tag-wimbledon-championships","tag-zheng-qinwen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19467\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}