Zheng Qinwen just made the elbow rebuild look real at the US Open
From qualifying at No. 121 to beating Madison Keys and Iga Swiatek out of consecutive 5-0 holes, China’s Olympic champion is back in the Flushing Meadows quarterfinals — with Elena Rybakina next.
Zheng Qinwen serving in first-round qualifying at the 2026 US Open — the path she had to take after right-elbow surgery dropped her ranking outside the main-draw cut.
Photo: 350z33 / CC BY-SA 4.0
On Arthur Ashe Stadium on Monday, Zheng Qinwen trailed Iga Swiatek 5-0 after twenty minutes. Then she won thirteen of the next sixteen games and closed 7-5, 6-3. The Paris Olympic champion collapsed onto her back when it ended — a qualifier into the US Open quarterfinals for the first time since Emma Raducanu in 2021.
She had done it to the 2022 champion and No. 8 seed, a player she had beaten only once before, in the Olympic semifinals on the way to gold. Two days earlier she had come back the same way against Madison Keys: down 5-0 in the deciding set, match point against her at 5-1, then the last seven games for 1-6, 7-6(3), 7-5. Keys was the 22nd seed and a former finalist here. Zheng entered Flushing Meadows at No. 121. The live rankings now have her at No. 52. Another win would push her toward the top 30.
In June 2025 she sat at a career-high No. 4 after a French Open quarterfinal. In July she had right-elbow surgery for chronic pain — bone fragments in the joint — and tried to rush home for the China Open. She retired in the third round against Linda Nosková and did not play again that season. Because the Beijing return cut her absence short of six months, she never got a protected ranking. The free-fall followed: as low as No. 160, then into Grand Slam qualifying for the first time in four years.
She missed the 2026 Australian Open, returned in Qatar, withdrew from Dubai with illness, and exited the French Open and Wimbledon in the first round. Washington and Toronto did not help. After a first-round qualifying loss in Canada, coach Pere Riba told her she could not keep playing like that. She agreed in five seconds, skipped Cincinnati, and spent the block at IMG Academy in Bradenton — tennis, gym, and little else, including one day that ran from 8 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. When she finally punched into the main draw through three qualifying rounds, she cried. “I fight so hard just to start like everyone else,” she said.
Chinese tennis needed that version of her back on a Slam second week. Zheng already owns the Olympic singles gold no Asian player had won before, an Australian Open final in 2024, and — with this run — a third US Open quarterfinal, one more than Li Na managed at this Slam. The weekly proof that the champion body still belonged there had gone missing for a year. Seven straight wins in New York, including Keys and Swiatek, put it back on the board.
Wednesday she gets No. 2 Elena Rybakina, the Australian Open champion who beat Naomi Osaka 6-1, 6-4 and is one win from World No. 1. Rybakina leads their meetings 4-1. The ranking climb can wait. After elbow surgery, a failed early comeback, and a year of early exits, Zheng is competing like herself again on the biggest hard-court stage she has.