Zheng Qinwen Reclaims Her Fire at the US Open

Zheng Qinwen hit the court, flat on her back, then sprang up with a roar and a clenched fist. On a muggy Thursday in New York, the Olympic champion looked and sounded like herself again.

This was not just a passage into the US Open third round. It felt like a reclamation.

The former world No. 4, who spent most of 2025 wrestling with an uncooperative elbow and an even more stubborn loss of belief, ground past Yulia Putintseva 6-4, 2-6, 6-1. The scoreline tells of a three-set scrap. The reaction told of something deeper.

“Before the surgery, for me winning is like drinking water — everything comes natural, everything comes fluent,” Zheng said after the match.

Those days, not so long ago, she bullied the tour with heavy groundstrokes and a calm certainty that big points belonged to her.

Then came surgery. A longer-than-expected recovery. Missed tournaments, including the Australian Open. Close matches against the sport’s elite that kept slipping away.

“After my surgery, I had some tough matches against the best players in the world (and) I'm close but I don't get them,” she admitted. “I totally lost the dynamic of how to compete.”

That loss has been visible in the rankings as well as the results. Zheng fell so far she arrived in New York not as a seeded threat, but as a qualifier. For a reigning Olympic gold medallist, that reality cut deep.

“It takes a while for me to accept my ranking dropped to 125 and, OK, I need to actually play qualies,” she said. The word “qualies” still sounded like something she was tasting rather than embracing.

Yet those days on the outer courts, fighting for a place in the main draw, have done something no practice session could. They have forced her back into the grind, point by point, match by match.

Now, she feels it again.

“Now after two, three months I really felt the first time in this tournament I find myself, I found my fire back during the competition,” she said.

That “fire” was evident in the way she handled Putintseva. After dropping the second set and with momentum running the other way, Zheng didn’t retreat. She reset, tightened her game, and ran away with the decider, 6-1. The competitive instincts she feared had deserted her kicked back in when it mattered.

Her reward is a third-round showdown with former Australian Open champion Madison Keys, a step up in power, pedigree and spotlight. It is exactly the kind of match Zheng once expected as standard fare at a Slam.

It also offers something she has missed almost as much as winning itself: a return to the big stage at Flushing Meadows.

Zheng has been working in the shadows so far, laboring through qualifying and the early rounds on the outside courts. For a player who broke through as a marquee attraction, that’s been another adjustment.

“I used to always play on the big court,” she said. “I need to fight to get everything back.”

The fight, at last, looks underway. Now comes the question that will shape the rest of her season: is this just a flicker of the old Zheng Qinwen, or the start of a full-scale return to the top?