Zheng Qinwen Wins the China Open, the First Home Singles Champion in Tournament History
On a wild card and ranked 54th, the 24-year-old beat French Open champion Mirra Andreeva 7-5, 6-4 in Beijing to become the first Chinese player ever to win the China Open — and China's first WTA 1000 champion since Li Na, fourteen years ago.
The last ball was an ace down the outer corner, and Zheng Qinwen fell onto her back on the blue court of the Diamond Court in Beijing, arms flung wide. When she got up, she was crying. The scoreboard read 7-5, 6-4 over Mirra Andreeva, the 19-year-old fourth seed and reigning French Open champion, and the China Open — a tournament that had never once been won by a home player, man or woman — finally had one.
The final itself was tight enough to explain the tears. Serving at 4-5 in the first set, Zheng faced three set points and saved them all, then broke back and took the set; at 0-30 in the second she strung together four points in a row to hold. Andreeva, hitting her first serves near 190 km/h, kept pushing, but Zheng's return — reworked in a recent overhaul of her technique — held up under it. Watching from courtside, Rocco Liu marvelled at exactly that: "Her return has improved remarkably. The mechanics change was really worth it. Both sets ended with an ace." His congratulations post carried the note many fans repeated — she had come back from a low point to win it.
The low point was real. Two years of injury problems, a coach — Pere Riba — who returned and steadied the project, and a ranking that had slid to 54th left Zheng needing a wild card just to enter her home tournament. She then won seven straight matches, taking out Svitolina and Mertens on the way — a run this site followed round by round as she became the first Chinese finalist in China Open history, then reached the last four past Svitolina. The title brings 1,000 ranking points and 1.15 million US dollars in prize money, and lifts her to 23rd in the live rankings.
The record books it rewrote are the reason the whole trending list is about her. Zheng is the first home singles champion in the China Open's history; the first Chinese player to win a WTA 1000 event on Chinese soil; and only the second Chinese woman, after Li Na at Cincinnati in 2012, to hold a 1000-level title at all — fourteen years, exactly, between the two. Her trophy cabinet now holds an Olympic gold medal from Paris 2024, a 1000, two 500s and two 250s. The only line missing, as one sports headline put it, is a Grand Slam.
The human moment travelled furthest. Her parents sat in the stands as the winning ace landed — the same parents who, as one profile post recounted, once knelt to beg a coach to take her on and sold a house to fund her training. In her on-court interview Zheng stacked up the gratitude: "Thank you to my team for staying with me — this has really not been an easy year. Thank you to the crowd, because this title has a share of yours in it. And thank you to the camera operators and staff — this tournament succeeds on everyone's support." Then, mic still in hand, she sang it again: 梦的光点, "Beams of Light of a Dream," a Cyndi Wang anthem from another era, and the WTA's own account called the singalong "a personal concert at the Diamond Court." The final topped national television ratings in its time slot, with the actor Jin Dong guest of honour at the toss.
The commercial machine moved just as fast. Sponsor posters for Alipay, Qianwen, Yili, Audi, Nike and the tea chain CHAGEE were circulating within the hour — her victory post on Weibo was liked almost 100,000 times — and CHAGEE, whose signed athlete she is, declared a buy-one-get-one day nationwide to celebrate. For a reader outside China, the scale of the apparatus around one tennis win is the story: a wild card from 54th in the world became, overnight, the country's lead item on every platform that has a list.
What comes next is the question the trending list itself is asking out loud: everything on the shelf but a Grand Slam.