On August 14, local time, the 2022 Rogers Cup tennis tournament ended the women's doubles final in Toronto, Canada: the No. 3 seed of the tournament, the American combination Off / Pergula defeated the unseeded combination Mericar / Perez 6-4/ 6 (5) -7/ 10-5 to win the second WTA 1000 level championship since the two worked together.
And this result may have left many Chinese fans who are closely watching the game in the early morning hours across the ocean. You may wonder: Isn't it just a tour final? And there are no Chinese players participating, what is worth the tension of Chinese fans?
The answer is: because of this championship, the 18-year-old Gauff became the new women's doubles world number one and the second youngest player in WTA history to achieve this achievement. And if she does not win this final, the throne after reaching the top will be China's Jinhua Zhang Shuai.
For Zhang Shuai, who is already 33 years old, her career has undoubtedly entered the end of its life. After experiencing setbacks in the early years, with her unremitting persistence and love for tennis, she finally broke through the cocoon in 2016, and now her great achievements are enough to make the fans who have accompanied her for many years feel pleased.
All the first 14 Grand Slam rounds, coupled with the continued plague of injuries, when Zhang Shuai was discouraged and considered retiring, it was the good sister Stosur who encouraged her to give herself another chance. The breakthrough of the Australian Open in 2016 has also become an opportunity for Zhang Shuai's career to be reborn.
Since then, she has been playing in doubles with Stosur for a long time, and their friendship and tacit understanding have made them achieve many good results: in 2018, she reached the final four of the US Open and won the Hong Kong championship, and the Next year's Australian Open won the championship in one fell swoop, winning another Grand Slam women's doubles trophy for Chinese tennis.
As they battled, they finished runners-up at the Miami Crown, madrid and Roma reached the quarter-finals back-to-back, and when they came to the 2019 French Open, an achievement that fans might not have dared to think of before began to become possible:
If he can win the French Open, Zhang Shuai will reach the top of the women's doubles world first.
Although the French Open was only ranked 9th in the world before the French Open, and as many as 3685 points behind the world number one at the time, Syniakova, it seemed only theoretically possible to reach the top of the French Open, but as the game progressed, Zhang Shuai's world number one road began to become more and more clear -
First of all, it was the top seed Soniakova/Krejicova who went out of the first round as the defending champion and lost 2,000 huge points, while Zhang Shuai/Stosur had no pressure to keep points in the french open women's doubles round the year before, so if they could win the championship, they could earn a net of 2,000 points, and they could produce a 4,000 point difference, which was enough to exceed the 3685 point gap mentioned above.
That being said, winning six games in a row to win the title is not easy; But Zhang Shuai/Stosur showed excellent form, winning three consecutive games to reach the quarterfinals, and also defeating the powerful Barty/Azarenka on the way. In the quarter-finals, Zhang Shuai/Stosur faced the Australian Open final defeater Babos/Mladenovic, and they once led their opponents 4-1 in the decider, but in the end they missed a good game and reversed it 6-3,1-6/6(3)-7, missing a better opportunity.
If Zhang Shuai defeats her opponent in the quarter-finals and wins the championship, her french open points will reach 6660, and Mladenovic, who stopped in the quarterfinals, will only have 6490 points. The truth is that in the end, Babos/Mladenovic won the French Open, and Mladenovic also returned to the women's doubles world number one with this title. After the French Open, Mladenovic scored 8060 points, Zhang Shuai was 5090 points, and Zhang Shuai's first attempt to impact the throne after the women's doubles goal was regrettably lost.
Due to the stable performance of other competitors and his failure to retain the 2,000 points of the Australian Open championship next year, Zhang Shuai slipped in the ranking in the next two years, and gradually drifted away from the world number one. But last summer, she gave up the Tokyo Olympics to regain her form in the professional arena, and together with Stosur won the Cincinnati and US Open championships, scoring 2900 points and successfully entering the year-end finals, with 500 points in the group stage with a 1 win and 2 losses.
In addition, Zhang Shuai also cooperated with Mirza, Sui Jiyili and other players to win a championship and a runner-up, and her outstanding performance in the second half of 2021 also laid a good foundation for her points. But at the beginning of this year, after the Australian Open and the North American Sunshine double match did not receive any results, Zhang Shuai and Stosur broke up, starting from the clay season, she has cooperated with different players such as Gauff, Sanders, McNally, etc., and during this period, foreign media exposed that Wimbledon will cancel points this year, and fans are also keenly aware that Zhang Shuai's opportunity to reach the top of the world has come again.
Because the four players in front of her have heavy points protection pressure: Sigyakova and Krejicova have 2430 points to protect the defending champions of the French Open and the quarter-finals of Wimbledon, and Mertens and Kudmetova have 2000 points and 1300 points to protect the runners-up of Wimbledon, respectively, after deducting these points, Zhang Shuai's immediate ranking in front of the French Open has come to the first place, which also means that in the time from the French Open to the grass warm-up match, Zhang Shuai has the opportunity to reach the top every stop.
First of all, the French Open, Zhang Shuai has the theoretical possibility of Roland Garros directly to the world number one: due to the defending champions Snyakova/ Klechkova retired due to injury before the game, if the No. 2 seed Kudmetova / Mertens is out before the third round, and Zhang Shuai finally wins the championship, she can surpass Mertens to reach the world number one.
Of course, this requirement is a bit harsh, Zhang Shuai and McNalie's first partnership did not spark, and they were out early in the third round; However, since Kudmetova/Mertens were also out of the third round, considering the Wimbledon deduction factor, Zhang Shuai did not directly reach the top of the French Open, but the prospects for the grass season are still very optimistic.
Entering the grass season, Zhang Shuai swept away the haze of the French Open defeat and showed a very good state, partnering with Brazilian maya to win four consecutive games to win the Nottingham championship, and the 280 points of the championship also made her start to grasp the initiative of competing for the world number one.
Next in Birmingham, her partner was Mertens, then the world number one. This gives birth to a delicate situation: because his partner is also a rival for the world number one, and the two points composition is not the same (Zhang Shuai's starting score is as high as 185 points, Mertens is 110 points), so if he scores at least 180 points in the final, Mertens's points will increase by 70 points, Zhang Shuai will not increase points, and Mertens will continue to suppress Zhang Shuai with a small advantage of 10 points.
To put it simply, Zhang Shuai is best out of the game before this final, and he can surpass his partner to become the new women's doubles world number one.
At that time, many fans secretly had some selfish intentions, relying on winning to reach the top requires hard work, relying on losing to reach the top, is not it simple? Playing casually, or simply withdrawing from the competition, is simply a pie level in the sky for many people, and it is a matter of low pocket.
But Zhang Shuai did not do this. She continued to work diligently with her partner, winning three games in a row to reach the final, and the semi-finals were disturbed by the rain and moved indoors. What's more, she also continued her excellent form in singles, passing all the way to the final four, and due to the rain, the semi-finals and finals of singles had to be completed on the same day on Sunday.
Singles semi-finals, singles finals, doubles finals – if all goes well, Zhang Shuai will face a severe test of three matches a day. In this case, it seems so reasonable to retire from the doubles semi-final on Saturday, but Zhang Shuai still chose to insist. Unfortunately, the fatigue of continuous combat finally made her unable to resist, and after the singles semi-final battle to the decisive set to grab seven before narrowly defeating Costia, she had no choice but to retire in the middle of the singles final, and she also missed the subsequent doubles final.
The exhaustion of the battle also affected her performance in the next stop, she played with the American Merrichar in Eastbourne, this time she did not have to lose to the top, if she can reach the final will become the new women's doubles world number one after Wimbledon, but in the end she rushed to Eastbourne without stopping, and her partner lost the game in the first round, and the road to the top lost again.
Originally withdrawing from the doubles semi-finals in Birmingham, it will be able to realize the dream of being the world number one in women's doubles, and the singles may also play better; And the final result is: the singles championship is not won, the doubles world number one can not be won, the loss of the lady and the fold. But after the game, Zhang Shuai's coach Liu Shuo told everyone on Weibo that Zhang Shuai did not know that she could reach the top before the final, but her professionalism did not allow her to live up to the trust of her partner, "to be a good person first, and then to compete for the world first."
It can be said that although her approach has lost her benefits, it has won the hearts and minds of the people. Subsequently, she and Mertens teamed up to reach the Wimbledon final, although there were no points at Wimbledon this year, but Zhang Shuai's outstanding performance in the promotion process made everyone full of expectations - several clay international matches after Wimbledon and the North American hard-ground warm-up match, the prospect of reaching the top is still very clear.
However, everything did not go in the direction that everyone hoped...
The usual lineup of the clay international tournament after Wimbledon is very dismal, and Zhang Shuai chose to cooperate with the former US Open women's doubles and mixed doubles champion Sigmund, which is simply a dimensionality reduction blow to other combinations from the paper. During the three-week competition, Zhang Shuai signed up for doubles, and as long as she won one of the championships, she could become the world number one.
But Zhang Shuai and Sigmund did not spark, and the Budapest station stumbled into the final four and lost to a pair of georgian combinations with mediocre strength; After breaking up with Sigmund, Zhang Shuai of Palermo Station temporarily partnered with Xiaohua Wang Xiyu, lost to an unknown pair of players in the first round, and then directly withdrew from the Warsaw station.
Three consecutive weeks of missed opportunities in clay internationals have worried fans, because when the North American season begins, the world number one rivals in doubles will all be on the move. At San Jose, Zhang Shuai chose to cooperate with Kudmetova, who is also a top 5 player in doubles, as the number one seed, as long as they reach the final, Zhang Shuai will reach the top.
This time, Zhang Shuai's state has rebounded compared to after Wimbledon, and they have successfully passed the first two rounds of tests, and Zhang Shuai is only one semi-final victory away from the world's first throne. But in the face of Xu Yipan / Yang Zhaoxuan, who also performed well this year, they lost this game in the first place, and Zhang Shuai once again fell in front of the threshold of the world number one.
Considering that the 2900 points of the Cincinnati and US Open champions are about to hit, this week's Rogers Cup has become Zhang Shuai's almost last hope for reaching the top. The upset round trip of top seed Mertens/Kudmetova once made fans feel that Zhang Shuai would finally be bitter this time, because with the number one seed out, her competitor was only Gauff, and Gauff had to win the championship to reach the top.
In fact, Zhang Shuai's partner with Sanders, who has worked with him in the clay season, can directly lock in the world first on their own if they can reach the final, but in the end, they stopped in the quarterfinals and could only wait for the performance of the Gauff combination. And Gauff did not miss this opportunity, and won the championship with Pegura in one fell swoop, becoming the youngest women's doubles world number one since Singis, and Zhang Shuai regretted it.
Zhang Shuai's long chase for the world number one in women's doubles has come to a temporary end with the end of the week. For Zhang Shuai, who has experienced a bumpy career, fans always hope that she can achieve more dreams and unlock more achievements in the last few years of her career, but on the field, many times it will backfire, which is the charm of the unpredictability of competitive sports.
Looking around the women's tennis world, some of the world's firsts are fighting for a Grand Slam trophy in their careers, and some Grand Slam winners hold various championships, except for one post-ball title. Zhang Shuai is already a two-time Grand Slam women's doubles champion + the second in the world, just imagine if back to the time when she was still under the cover of Zheng Jie/Yan Zi, Straits combination and other predecessors, who can know that Zhang Shuai can achieve such dazzling results in the doubles field in the future?
Contentment may not be the most suitable quality for athletes, but it is a cure for fans. Let us look at the players' games with a normal heart, and wish Zhang Shuai to continue to enjoy the fun of tennis in the last few years of his career and usher in a wonderful life. After all, for her once discouraged and considering retiring, all her achievements since 2016 have been an additional reward for herself with perseverance and persistence.