First Chinese in the ATP Elite 100! How will Zhang Zhichen follow up his record-breaking results in Hamburg?

For a long time, the Chinese tennis player looked very unusual among the best players in the world. But Zhang Zhichen is doing everything he can to make this situation the norm. He has rewritten Chinese tennis history several times recently. Where does he go from here?

Over the past year, Zhang Zichen has been making his presence felt. At last year’s ATP 250 event in Naples, he advanced to the quarterfinals and surpassed a milestone that no Chinese has ever achieved. He has entered the top 100 tennis players in the world.

This year is the first year that the 26-year-old Chinese player has participated mainly in top-tier tournaments. Until last year, he played mainly in challengers. And he’s definitely not just a number on the ATP circuit.

He really stirred up the tennis scene at the Masters in Madrid. In April in the Spanish capital, he made a run to the top eight. No Chinese player had ever achieved such a feat before.

The grass courts didn’t give him much success. He won only two of his six matches. Zhang Zhichen may especially regret his elimination in the first round of Wimbledon. He lost to Van De Zandschulp of the Netherlands in a five-set battle.

Now he will be looking for another good result on clay in Hamburg. On the surface that has brought him the most success.

The new superstar?

It was at the event in the German port city that he was named a black horse by the local tournament ambassador. Let’s add that Andrea Petkovic, a former German professional tennis player, fills this role. And she sees the Chinese player as a possible future superstar of men’s tennis.

Zhang Zhichen is understandably grateful for such words, but he also shows plenty of humility. “At the last tournament I lost in the first round against a qualifier,” he tames his ambitions in Hamburg in aninterview with the tournament’s official website.

Hamburg and the possibility of a big rematch

Now he has a similar test ahead of him. Last week, the Serb Medjenovic kicked off a great tournament with a win over the Chinese. In Germany, Zhang Zhichen will face Britain’s Choinskiy in the opening match. And he’s hoping to shine at this event.

“Every week is different. I hope I can get good results here,” he adds with determination. And if he advances, the tournament promises a very interesting sequel. A rematch with Francisco Cerundolo is in the air. He knocked the Chinese tennis player out of this year’s Wimbledon.

Chinese men’s tennis has waited a long time for a player like Chiang Chen. Despite not being one of the youngest tennis players in the world’s elite 100, he shows promise. Every player is an original and it is not always that a tennis player achieves tremendous results in his twenties.

C’-chen has managed to draw attention to himself with his achievements and it can be assumed that he will perform other similar feats. Last year at this time of the year he was on a roll in the Challengers. He’s rarely finished before the finals.

This year he’s looking to take his success up a notch. In Hamburg, he will definitely try to take his chance at one of the last clay tournaments of the season and he can do literally anything in this category as well.

Source: ATP Hamburg