Player history

Zheng Qinwen was born in Shiyan, China on October 8, 2002. In the summer of 2021 Zheng at the Internazionali Femminili in Palermo took part in the first tournament on the WTA circuit.

Having easily overcome the two qualifying rounds, she accesses the main draw of the tournament, where she simultaneously takes her first victory in the WTA circuit against the second seed Ljudmila Samsonova. She is later defeated in straight sets by Jaqueline Cristian. You conclude the season by passing the qualifications in the indoor tournaments of Moscow and Courmayeur. In both cases she suffers a defeat in the first round of the main draw.

Zheng inaugurates the 2022 season with participation in the 250 tournament in Melbourne where, having guaranteed access to the main draw by passing the qualifiers, she goes all the way to her first WTA semifinal thanks to victories over Mai Hontama, the former world number one Vera Zvonarëva and Ana Konjuh. She surrenders only to second seed and eventual tournament winner Simona Halep.

After that Zheng passes all three qualifying rounds which earned her access to her first Grand Slam main draw at the Australian Open. Thanks to the three set victory over Aljaksandra Sasnovic she gets her first victory in the main draw of a Major. In the second round she loses to world number five Maria Sakkari, who inflicts a 6-1, 6-4 on her. The results obtained in the first two tournaments played in the season allow her to enter the top hundred in the world, precisely reaching the 80th position.

The ranking obtained allows her to directly access the main draw of the second Grand Slam of the season, the Roland Garros. In Paris, she easily overtook Maryna Zanevska before overcoming 19th seed and former tournament winner Simona Halep to avenge her loss in January. In the third round she takes advantage of Alizé Cornet's withdrawal after being ahead 6-0, 3-0 and thus reaches the second week of a Grand Slam for the first time, in her second overall participation in a tournament of this magnitude.

In her first round of Grand Slam she finds herself opposed to world number one Iga Swiatek, on a winning streak of thirty-one matches. Zheng manages to snatch the first set from the Polish player in the tie-break after being 5-2 down in the set, to then capitulate in the next two sets, also thanks to an injury: the final score is 7-65, 6-0, 6-2 . Thanks to the excellent result obtained, she continues the climb of the Chinese tennis player up to the 55th position in the world.

The following week she wins the first WTA 125 title in Valencia, and thanks to the points deriving from her, she enters the top fifty in the world reaching the 46th position; she simultaneously surpasses Zhang Shuai, so as to become the Chinese tennis player with the highest placement in the ranking.

In the race for the title she ousted Andrea Lázaro García, Irina Maria Bara, Réka Luca Jani, Nuria Parrizas-Diaz and in the last act compatriot Wang Xiyu. The transition to grass materialized in two first-round defeats at tournaments in Berlin and Eastbourne; Zheng found victory again at Wimbledon, where she prevailed over Sloane Stephens and Greet Minnen without losing sets, before surrendering to eventual winner Elena Rybakina 64-7, 5-7.

She returns to the court exactly one month later at Stanford, where she makes her debut on the fast North American with a three set defeat against Naomi Osaka. Then she gets a good result at the Rogers Cup, her fourth 1000 tournament of the season.

 In Canada, she overcame the local wild-card Rebecca Marino, she took advantage of the withdrawal of the fifth seed Ons Jabeur on a score of 6-1, 2-1 in her favor, thus taking the first victory against a career top ten. In the next round she dispatched home favorite and 2019 champion Bianca Andreescu in three sets before being fought back by defending finalist and 14th seed Karolina Pliskova. At the US Open she beat 16th seed Jelena Ostapenko and Russia's Anastasia Potapova before being upset by Jule Niemeier 6-4, 7-65 in the third round.

She inaugurates the final part of the season by taking the first WTA final of her career at the Tokyo 500 tournament. In Japan she goes all the way to the semifinals without losing sets, also beating top seed and world number four Paula Badosa 6-3, 6-2, a performance that gives her the second victory against a top ten and the first at match completed. In the semifinals, she came back to Veronika Kudermetova in a match that lasted more than three hours and ended with the final score of 5-7, 6-3, 7-63. In the last act she finds herself opposed to another Russian player, Ljudmila Samsonova, against whom she is forced to give in with a double 7-5. At the end of the tournament, Zheng enters the top 30 for the first time, pushing himself up to 28th position.

Her last tournament was the San Diego Open where, despite not having passed the qualifications, she was fished out as a lucky loser and took advantage of Garbine Muguruza's withdrawal in the first round match, before surrendering in three sets to Swiatek (6-4, 4 -6, 6-1). She closes the season in 25th position in the world and, by virtue of the results obtained, she is awarded as young player of the year in the WTA Awards.