Your support will help us tell this story
Our mission is to provide unbiased, fact-based reporting that holds people accountable and reveals the truth.
Whether it’s $5 or $50, every contribution counts.
Support us in delivering agenda-free journalism.
When Zhang Shuai arrived in Beijing for the China Open, the 35-year-old discovered that any mentions of her name were beginning to be followed by someone named Madeleine Pegel. Unfortunately for Zhang, it wasn’t good news: Madeleine Pegel’s tennis career left very few traces except an unwanted piece of tennis history that she carried with her for the last 52 years, the longest losing streak in WTA history. According to the Tour, Pegel lost her first 29 consecutive matches between 1968 and 1972. And only after Zhang’s disastrous form did anyone come close to this value.
Zhang is from the city of Tianjin, which is close enough to Beijing to consider the China Open a home tournament. Former world number 22 in singles and world number 2 in doubles, where she is also a two-time Grand Slam champion, Zhang received a wild card into the China Open even though her ranking dropped to 595th. But it wasn’t as much of a burden as her 24 straight singles losses, which spanned 603 days through January 2023 and was Pegel’s longest losing streak in a generation.
But a week later, everything changed, and something amazing happens in Beijing: Not only did Zhang break her losing streak by ending her first-round losing streak by defeating McCartney Kessler 7-6, 7-6 on Wednesday, but the 35-year-old also recorded two more victories. Zhang’s long-awaited victory was followed by a historic result against US Open semifinalist and world number eight Emma Navarro, becoming the lowest-ranked player to defeat a top-10 opponent in the tournament’s history. She then passed Greet Minnen and reached the final 16.
Zhang feels transformed. She still hasn’t lost a set. and she can’t stop winning: “When I’m on the court, I feel like Rafael Nadal on the Philippe-Chatrier court,” she said after Sunday’s victory over Minnen. “When you lose, maybe everyone wants to play against you. Now no one wants to play against you.”
Her dramatic change of fortune did not go unnoticed among other players. Heather Watson once described her as “one of the nicest singers on the tour.” Her former doubles partner Coco Gauff said Zhang “deserves everything” and told the WTA: “It’s been hard to watch her go on a hot streak. “But honestly, through all of this, you would never know she was going through it. I literally saw her five minutes after the games and she was still greeting me and was so excited to see me, and I’m not like that after a loss.
And that attitude was undoubtedly required when Zhang was going through a losing streak. She put it down partly to bad luck, having drawn a series of tough opponents in the first round of Grand Slam tournaments, but as the losses piled up and Zhang struggled with injuries, she decided to take a six-month break from the sport after Montreal. in August last year. Zhang returned in February, but losses continued. When the Tour returned to China, Zhang believed she needed the result more than ever. “I thought I needed to challenge myself, but I’m not young anymore,” she said. “I don’t have many chances. I don’t have many tournaments. I need a little better drawing. I need at least one more victory in my life.”
Instead, when Zhang faces Magdalena Frech in the round of 16 on Tuesday, it’s not about looking back, but forward.
“Just a week after one game, it’s completely different.”
#tennis #player #stopped #streak #losses #row #stop #winning