With the French Open approaching, international tennis has entered clay time, with the women's Stuttgart and the men's Barcelona at the same time. Jinhua's first sister, Zheng Qinwen, sent an invisible egg to beat Kostya with a standard score to get off to a good start to the clay season, 6-2 and 6-3.
After winning the runner-up at the Australian Open, Zheng Qinwen's world ranking came to the top 10, but unfortunately he did not achieve too good results in the subsequent Sunshine Doubles. Coming to the clay court, facing the world No. 29 Kostya, Zheng Qinwen won seven games in a row with a 3-2 lead in the first game, not only winning the first set, but also leading 4-0 in the second set.
However, after that, Kostya stabilized his position and fought back, and after a successful comeback, the score was close to 2-4. In the next three games, Zheng Qinwen did not give his opponent any chance, and won the match point in the opponent's unprotected service game and won 6-3. In the second round, Zheng Qinwen will face the winner between Kostyuk and veteran Sigmund. If they can still make the cut, they could face US Open champion and third seed Gauff in the third round.
It is worth mentioning that this match is the first time that Zheng Qinwen has beaten a Top 30 player on the tour this year, and the United Cup has beaten world No. 7 Vondrousova, but the United Cup is not part of the tour. In addition, this is the second time that Zheng Qinwen has beaten a Top 30 player on clay, and France won 19th ranked Halep in '22. After winning this battle, Zheng Qinwen gained 60 points and immediately ranked seventh.
In the other Women's Doubles match, Xu Yifan/Wu Fangxian were beaten by second seeds Krejcikova/Sigmund after winning a set to miss out on the cut, 6-3, 4-6, 7-10. In the next stop, Xu Yifan will partner Watson in Madrid. The first round of the Chinese men's tennis team was also stopped by Zhang Zhizhen, who lost to Van Ascher 5-7, 2-6 in the first round of Barcelona, and Shang Juncheng, who lost to Mahachi 4-6, 4-6.
If you look at the world rankings, Zhang Zhizhen has every chance to advance to the second round, because Van Ascher's world ranking is only 99th, 52 places lower than Zhang Zhizhen, but Zhang Zhizhen did not seize the opportunity and was knocked out. Zhang saved a set point in the first set and broke her opponent's serve to win the set, but then lost five games in a row in the back-to-back stages of the two sets, wasted three break points in the second set, and finally had to swallow the defeat.
The highlight of the men's singles first round in Barcelona was Nadal's comeback debut, which marked Nadal's return to the clay season after 681 days, with a 6-2, 6-3 win over Italian star Corboli to make his comeback debut, and he will next face fourth seed De Minaur in the second round. Nadal looked like an easy victory, but he was broken in the second set, but Koboli made a lot of mistakes and was inexperienced.