At this year's Madrid Masters, no one expected that Zhang Zhizhen, the second brother of the mainland men's tennis team, would become the biggest surprise of the Chinese mainland men's tennis in the men's singles arena. Now, from his body, it seems that people can see the momentum of a dark horse galloping!
After the latest world ranking came out, Zhang Zhizhen ranked 99th! Thinking about his performance entering the new season, almost everyone thought before the match that after the Madrid Masters, there is a good chance that his world ranking will fall out of the top 100, and when he will be able to play back, only God knows. As for the goal of entering the world's top 50 in the new season, maybe you can only think about it!
To be precise, after Zhang Zhizhen entered the new season, his performance on the field was indeed unflattering. Whether it's a Grand Slam or a tour, the overall performance is particularly crotch-pulling. If it weren't for the subsequent transfer to the ATP low-level challenge and winning a few long-awaited victories, it is estimated that many people may rarely mention him for the second brother of the mainland male tennis team.
After being ranked in the Madrid Masters for the first time in the world rankings, considering that Zhang Zhizhen has never had a trustworthy performance in such a major event as the Masters before, there are naturally very few people who are optimistic about him appearing in the Madrid Masters.
Especially in the case that Wu Yixiang, the first brother of the mainland men's tennis team, was eliminated in the first round of the Madrid Masters, for Zhang Zhizhen, who appeared later, the vast majority of fans and netizens before the game believed that most of Zhang Zhizhen must not escape the fate of the same round as Wu Yixiang. The reason is that Wu Yixiang, who has a better temperament in the game, has folded in advance at the Madrid Masters, and Zhang Zhizhen, who has a poor psychological quality, can pass the first round, it will be a heavenly surprise!
However, accidents and surprises really happened to Zhang Zhizhen!
In the first round against world No. 119 qualifier Rodionov, when Zhang Zhizhen won the first set in a thrilling victory, and held three match points in the second set to win the game on serve, wasting the first two match points, it instantly mobilized everyone's nervousness.
The outside world is worried that Zhang Zhizhen will accidentally collapse if he holds the game well, which will change the final result of the game. Because Zhang Zhizhen has held the match point several times, when he is getting closer and closer to victory, he suddenly can't play, and finally loses.
Fortunately, Zhang Zhizhen withstood the pressure at the Madrid Masters this time, successfully won the match on the third match point, and finally broke through this psychological magic barrier and proved himself.
After reaching the second round of the Madrid Masters, Zhang also set two records: his first win in the Masters and the second round of the Chinese mainland men's tennis tournament in the clay Masters.
After the match, Zhang Zhizhen himself admitted that he was surprised that he could reach the second round of the Madrid Masters, and did not expect that he would make history before the match.
For Zhang Zhizhen's brilliant performance in the Madrid Masters debut, some netizens bluntly said that they may have realized that their ranking has reached the edge of the cliff outside the world's top 100 at any time, which inspired the fighting spirit of his second brother Zhang Zhizhen, and simply gave it a go, maybe he could find a glimmer of life, but he didn't expect that in the end, he really won the jackpot for himself and the mainland men's network.
Although Zhang Zhizhen entered the second round of the Madrid Masters, but against Canadian strength player Shapovalov in the second round, before the start of this match, many people from the outside world predicted that Zhang Zhizhen was very likely to stop the second round, hoping that he could create a bigger surprise, which was really more difficult than ascending to the sky.
The reason why the outside world says this is actually very simple, Shapovalov is the top 30 players in the world, just the strength of the two sides, that is, the gap is obvious to the naked eye. Zhang Zhizhen wants to overcome the difficulties of Canadians and become a dark horse, unless he is favored by the god of luck.
'The next game is against top players and I will be ready for everything, he is not so easy to beat, I will try to be ready for the game.' For this battle with Shapovalov, Zhang Zhizhen also knew before the match that it was an extremely difficult match. But from his words, it is clear that he has won his first victory in the Madrid Masters main event, and his confidence has obviously improved a lot.
In the match against Shapovalov, it can be seen from the first set that Zhang Zhizhen did prepare well before the match, and the desire to win is very obvious, which can be seen from the two men playing until they are seven breaks.
Especially after entering the second round of the competition, Zhang Zhizhen did show an unusual mentality from the previous opponents. After losing the first set, not only did he not quickly abandon his weapons and surrender, but he showed excellent fighting spirit, completely broke out, and at the same time, he also tied the big score and dragged the match into the decider.
When Zhang Zhizhen was in the midst of 2-4 adversity, he really let people see that his psychological quality has been raised to a new height, and he has shown more fearless hard work. After slowly leveling the scoreline, he once again advanced the game to tie the seven. In the end, by beating Shapovalov in seven matches, he upset the world No. 27 Canadian power star in Madrid.
After defeating his strong rival Shapovalov in an incredible way, Zhang Zhizhen stopped the further decline in the world rankings while also setting five records: the first career win against a top 30 player; Chinese mainland men's tennis won two consecutive matches in the main draw of the Masters for the first time; Chinese mainland men's tennis reached the third round of the Masters for the first time; Chinese mainland men's tennis reached the round of 32 for the first time at the Clay Masters; Chinese mainland men's tennis record to date on the Clay Tour.
He has created so many new records at once, and in the eyes of many netizens, Zhang Zhizhen has become a dark horse running wild at the Madrid Masters, giving people a new feeling of being different.
The next round of Zhang Zhizhen will challenge the British brother Norrie, for this focus battle, the outside world is very looking forward to it, but also want to know whether Zhang Zhizhen can completely become a super dark horse of the Madrid Masters with the battle against Norrie, and continue to bring more surprises to everyone! (Source: Tennis House Author: The Starry Sky of the Moon River)