Qualifier Zheng Qinwen erases 5-0 deficit to knock Iga Świątek out of the US Open

Zheng Qinwen, playing in the US Open main draw only after winning three matches in qualifying, eliminated eighth-seeded Iga Świątek from the tournament on Monday, coming back from a 5-0 deficit in the first set to win 7-5, 6-3 on Arthur Ashe Stadium. It was the second consecutive match in which the 23-year-old Chinese player erased a 5-0 hole, and it made her the first qualifier to reach the US Open women's quarterfinals since Emma Raducanu won the title as a qualifier in 2021, according to the WTA Tour's official recap of the match.

Świątek, a six-time major champion who won this tournament in 2022, had raced through the first five games in barely 20 minutes, hitting clean winners and pinning Zheng in the corners of the court. Then the match turned. Zheng won seven of the next eight games to close out the opening set, then broke serve twice more in the second to seal the result in one hour and 56 minutes, according to the official match box score published by the WTA.

The numbers behind the comeback

Zheng finished with 20 winners, nine of them in the first set alone, and outscored Świątek 75 points to 63 across the match. She won 83 percent of points on her first serve (20 of 24) and converted five of 13 break-point chances, compared with two of seven for Świątek. Both players struggled with their serves in patches — Zheng hit three aces to Świątek's one — but it was Zheng's return game, and her composure after conceding the early lead, that decided the outcome.

The result also extended a run that has already reshaped Zheng's ranking. She entered the tournament at No. 121 in the world, having gone through qualifying for just the second time in her Grand Slam career, and her run to the quarterfinal has pushed her provisional live ranking up to roughly No. 52, with a further jump to the fringe of the top 30 available if she wins her next match, per the WTA's published rankings.

How Zheng got here

Zheng's presence in the second week of a Grand Slam was far from assured a few months ago. The 2024 Paris Olympic gold medalist in singles reached a career-high ranking of No. 4 in June 2025, then missed large stretches of the following months with an elbow injury. She returned to the tour without her old form: entering the US Open, she had gone 11-13 on the season, with six first-round losses, including at the French Open and Wimbledon, and had not won a Grand Slam match since June 2025, according to reporting by the South China Morning Post.

That slide meant Zheng had to enter qualifying at Flushing Meadows for the first time, needing to win three matches — the last of them a 6-4, 3-6, 6-0 defeat of Elena Pridankina — just to reach the main draw. Since then she has not lost. She beat Madison Keys in the third round on Saturday, rallying from 0-5 down in the deciding set of that match as well, before repeating the trick against a far more decorated opponent in Świątek. The Monday win also made her the first qualifier or lucky loser to beat Świątek at a major; Świątek had previously been 15-0 in Grand Slam matches against players who entered through qualifying, per the WTA.

Reaction

Zheng, who has spoken candidly this year about the psychological toll of her ranking collapse, said her comeback came from narrowing her focus to a single point at a time rather than the scoreboard, a version of the match NBC Sports also carried in its coverage.

"I just focus point by point, and little by little, I start to play better tennis, I start to find my game. And in one moment, I even forgot the score in the first set at 4-5. That shows how I'm focused," Zheng said afterward.

She has been more direct about how hard the past year has been away from the court. "Psychologically, it's very difficult to accept. I used to be Top 10, an Olympic champion," Zheng said of watching her ranking slide out of the top 100. "My ranking dropped so much after injury. I need to keep positive every single day."

Świątek played down the significance of blowing the early lead. "It's just one match, like … try to play the same way as usual," she told reporters. Asked specifically about surrendering a 5-0 advantage, she added: "You know, you can lose a set from any score. So, nothing special about that. Just that's what happened and that's it." She was similarly measured when asked about her own performance, saying only that her timing had been off and that it was "tough to get over that when it happens."

What happens next

Zheng's reward for the upset is a quarterfinal against second-seeded Elena Rybakina, who beat Naomi Osaka 6-1, 6-4 in the day's other fourth-round match, a result confirmed in ESPN's tournament coverage. Rybakina leads their head-to-head series 4-1 and has won both of their meetings this season, leaving Zheng a heavy underdog again despite a run of six straight wins dating back to qualifying.

For Świątek, the loss ends her US Open campaign in the round of 16 and comes in a season that has otherwise gone well: she added a first Wimbledon title in July to go with her four French Open crowns and the US Open trophy she won in 2022.

The US Open quarterfinals continue through the week at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Queens, with the women's semifinals scheduled for later in the tournament.