Zhang has a pretty powerful game. Good serve, great backhand, decent forehand. Lacks touch at the net.
Gasquet was 2-0 up in the third and 40-0 up in his last service game. Stupid tactics from him, he was successful when he was rushing Zhang and also hitting low slices to him. For some reason decided to moonball most of the time.
Well, this is what can be called a major upset even knowing Gasquet ability to play bad matches. But at the same time great day for Ze Zhang and the whole mens tennis in China.
just one note as Chinese tennis is honored today : I know the ATP does it the Western way, but Chinese people (also Vietnamese and Koreans I know they do the same) say the family name before the first name, which means Zhang Ze here.
What a match by Zhang Never lost belief, fought till the end, went for his shots, and got rewarded. Well done!
Watched the whole match. Gasquet played the 1st set very passively, didn't try to create anything, was probably thinking that Zhang will break down by himself. It didn't happen, and amazingly Zhang managed to break at 4:4. Had some troubles with finishing it off, by letting 40/0 lead to slip away, when serving for the set, but got the job done with 4th set point. In the 2nd set Gasquet stepped up, started to play more aggressively, got a break immediately and held it till the end. Gasquet started the 3rd set very positively as well, broke Zhang in 1st game, but then for some reason he returned to a more passive gameplan and didn't change it till the end of the match.
The more attacking player won. Gasquet had all the chances to create problems to Zhang, just lure him to the net, play some shorter balls, try to boss some points, as Zhang was struggling, when Gasquet added more pace to his shots. But he did almost none of that, and very deserved loss.
Zhang was good in the 1st set, hitting some great shots, esp from the BH. Gasquet upped his level in the 2nd playing more offensive whereas Zhang's dipped. Gasquet started the 3rd well, by taking a 2-0 lead but got broken in the 4th game where he had a 40-15 game. Richard also lost a 40-0 lead on serve when serving to stay in it where Zhang hit 3 great winners in the last game.
Well played Zhang Ze - he was playing well from what I saw of it. Richie a bit lacklustre coming off Bangkok but it still had to be won and Ze did a good job.
Would be nice to see him and Wu Di make the top 100 at some stage soon.
Good to see Zhang didn't letdown in the final set.
Didn't think he could pull it off yet, but what a great moment for him, his team and the supporters.
I read that ZZ's current coach was Gasquet's former coach, looks like they're on the right track.
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