Zheng stuns Keys with epic US Open comeback from match point down

Madison Keys was twenty-three minutes away from a dominant opening set when she wrapped it up 6-1 against Zheng Qinwen at the US Open. The American, seeded 22nd and a crowd favorite, looked like she was about to dismantle the Chinese player entirely. But Zheng, the Olympic champion who had clawed her way through qualifying just to reach the main draw, had other plans—though even she could not have imagined how far those plans would take her.

By the third set, Keys appeared to have the match in hand. Zheng found herself down 5-0, staring at match point. The deficit was so complete that it seemed almost academic—a formality before Keys moved on. Instead, Zheng held serve and then began an extraordinary run. She won seven consecutive games, seized the third set 7-5, and claimed a 1-6 7-6 7-5 victory that left her throwing herself to the floor in disbelief. The second set had gone to a tiebreak, which she won 7-3, but it was that final set—the one she was supposed to lose—that will define this match in memory.

The comeback carries weight because of where Zheng has been. Twelve months earlier, she was climbing toward the top of the sport. In 2024, she reached the Australian Open final, won Olympic gold, and made the US Open quarterfinals. Early 2025 looked promising too—she advanced to the French Open quarterfinals and climbed to a career-high ranking of fourth in the world. Then, in July 2025, she underwent elbow surgery to address a chronic injury caused by bone fragments floating in the joint. The surgery was necessary, but it cost her nearly everything.

When she returned to competition at the French Open this year, she lost in the first round to Maja Chwalinska, the eventual runner-up. It was her first Grand Slam since the operation, and the defeat came after nine months away from serious competition. Her ranking plummeted to 160. For the first time in four years, she had to enter Grand Slam qualifying. She did not qualify for a protected ranking—a status that allows injured players to maintain their seeding—because she had made an early return to play at her home tournament in Beijing in October 2025. That decision, made when she was still recovering, meant she had to earn her way into the main draw the hard way.

Zheng described the experience as humbling and painful. "I was even crying after I won the third match to reach the main draw," she said. The qualifying rounds felt like a step backward, a return to a starting point she thought she had left behind. "The main draw is just the beginning where all the players start. That was my beginning before. I fight so hard just to start like everyone else. For me, that was really not easy." She had questioned whether she would ever rediscover her form. After the Paris loss, she told reporters through tears that she had "lost the energy" and "forgot how to compete."

Against Keys, something shifted. Zheng has now been taken to three sets in four of her six matches in New York, suggesting that her competitive instincts are returning, even if inconsistently. The match itself contained a small moment of grace: at 5-4 and 0-15 down in the third set, a baby in the crowd started crying just as Zheng was about to serve. She stopped her motion, paused, and then smiled about it afterward. "If it's an adult, probably I will look at him very hard or start to speak, but it's just a baby," she said. "I can't do anything, you know? It's just a baby." She won the next four points to level the game, and from there the momentum never left her.

When it was over, Zheng reflected on the improbability of what had just happened. "Finally, a bit of luck is on my side," she said. "I am just telling myself ever give up. Somehow, little by little, it's just happened. Tennis sometimes feels like a rollercoaster. You see many times people have a match point, but at the end we made a comeback." She is now the first qualifier to reach the women's fourth round at the US Open since Emma Raducanu, who came through qualifying in 2021 and went on to win the entire tournament. Whether Zheng's path leads anywhere near that destination remains to be seen, but on this night, she proved that the player who won Olympic gold and reached a Grand Slam final is still in there somewhere, still fighting.