‘Just Call Me Qinwen’: Golden Girl Zheng Turns Focus to Cincy

By Richard Osborn

There she was, bigger than life, her image splashed across a billboard, sporting a fierce, determined look. The oversized ad (for a certain swoosh-logoed shoe-and-apparel brand) was accompanied by the catchwords: THERE’S ONLY ONE SOUVENIR I WANT FROM PARIS.

That souvenir was an Olympic gold medal, and China’s Zheng Qinwen, now by all measures a superstar, indeed got what she wanted, pushing past even world No. 1 and four-time Roland Garros titlist Iga Swiatek in the semifinals, 6-2, 7-5, en route to the top of the podium.

“After I won the gold medal, I went to social media, Instagram, Xiaohongshu, and I saw that big picture of me. That was really nice,” said Zheng, 21. “Nice picture, nice face, nice look.”

How do we address her now, I wondered, as she sat down for a pre-tournament presser ahead of the Cincinnati Open? As ‘Gold Medalist Zheng Qinwen’?

“Just call me Qinwen,” she laughed. “‘Gold Medalist’ can’t stay forever.”

That’s just the nature of her sport. The calendar flips and you go from one tournament to another, your next match always awaiting you. There’s rarely much time for celebrations.

“I feel very happy, but the schedule has been very intense for me,” she said. “I didn’t have many days to rest and I came here jetlagged and everything but, of course, that’s tennis life. The first three days when I woke up, I felt, ‘Wow, that’s amazing!’ But now, I think I’ve come back to reality.”

There was a joyous dinner with her team in Paris, but her parents were unable to join as they didn’t make the trip from Wuhan.

“The only thing missing was celebrating with my family.”

Where is her Olympic hardware?

“It’s already in China,” said Zheng. “The first thing when I called my father, he told me, ‘Give your medal to your manager. We want the medal back in China.’”

Zheng says she had circled the Olympics on her calendar as far back as 2022, but even if she targeted a deep run representing her homeland, winning it all came as a surprise.

“I didn’t think about the gold medal, this is true,” she said. “I was just trying to get a medal. That was my first target. But after I broke through some matches, especially the match I won against Iga, I realized, ‘That’s my chance.’”

What stood out during her run on the red clay was how she didn’t give in in tough moments, something she might have done in the past. She claimed consecutive three-setters against American Emma Navarro and retiring German Angelique Kerber in the Round of 16 and quarterfinals, respectively. (“I never felt nervous like that,” she said. “I had a bathroom break, and I realized my hand was shaking without control.”)

She says she’ll do her best to bring that no-quit mentality through the end of the year, which includes Cincinnati, the US Open, and an important swing through her homeland.

“I discussed that with my team. My coach said, ‘If you can keep this mentality at all these tournaments, you will be unstoppable.’ I said to them, ‘It’s really difficult.’ It’s the moment you need to find the hunger, you need to find the motivation. It’s tough to maintain that mentality.”

Zheng will try to avoid the kind of letdown she experienced after the Australian Open, where she broke through to her first major singles final (lost to Aryna Sabalenka, 6-3, 6-2). She failed to get past the Round of 16 in eight of her next 10 events.

“Honestly, I’m a little bit scared looking back at the Australian pattern, which is not so many great tournaments after,” reflected Zheng. “I don’t know what’s going to happen this time. This is going to be a challenge for me, to maintain the same level when you get a big result. I’m trying to get that mentality, always trying to improve, trying to stay humble, but it’s different to actually do it. I hope I can do that well in Cincinnati and the US Open because I had a great experience last year at these two tournaments.”

After a first-round bye, the seventh-ranked Zheng will open against either Maria Bouzkova or Magdalena Frech on Thursday at the Lindner Family Tennis Center.