This week has been a dark week for Chinese men's tennis. In the first round of the ATP 500 Rotterdam Open, Zhang Zhizhen lost to the fourth seed of the tournament, Russia's Rublev, with a score of 3:6 and 4:6; Mongolian player Buyun Chaokert was defeated by Spain's Munar in straight sets in the first round of the ATP 500 Dallas Open. Objectively speaking, if Zhang Zhizhen's loss to his opponent is due to Rublev's ranking far above him, which can be said to be excusable, then in the face of an opponent who is not as good as his own in the world ranking, Buyun Chaokert's defeat is somewhat inexplicable. Not only that, but he only won two games in the second set when he forced his opponent to a seven-point score in the first set. Perhaps, this also shows that Chinese post-00 players actually have a lot of room for improvement.

may be to confirm the authenticity of the author's statement, last week at the Brisbane tennis court in Australia, there were two Chinese post-00 rookies who were reversed by their opponents in a good situation with a set in hand. So, who are these two Chinese post-00s rookies? Who are their opponents? Let this article take you to see it today.

The first player I would like to introduce is Zhou Yi, who is the same year as Shang Juncheng and has defeated several seeded players at the 2023 Australian Open junior tournament and reached the semifinals. This is the second Chinese men's tennis player to reach the semifinals of the Australian Open since the Open era. In the more than a year since then, Zhou Yi has won two hope championships. Not only that, but he also won the ATP 250 Chengdu Open and the Shanghai Masters. At present, Zhou Yi is the third brother of the post-00 Chinese men's tennis players.

However, it was such a player who was defeated by Australia's Skulkat in straight sets in the first round of the ITF W75 Challenger Brisbane last week. However, if you consider that Skulkett won four straight matches to win his third career Challenger title, perhaps Zhou's defeat can be justified. He stayed in Brisbane this week. Zhou Yi's opponent in the first round was Australian qualifier M Hulme. In the first set, Zhou Yi gave away a duck egg. It's a pity that in the following game, the situation changed abruptly, and Australian player M Hulme actually won two sets in a row to defeat Zhou Yi. Zhou Yi still wants to pursue his first victory in the overseas challenge tournament in his tennis career after that.

After talking about Zhou Yi, let's take a look at another player, Shi Han. Coincidentally, she and Zhou Yi were born in 2005 in the same year. Similarly, Shi Han is also in the 2024 season and has a good performance. This year, she won two Challenger tournaments and one Hope Tournament title. Not only that, but she also got her first career tour win in the 2024 season. It is precisely because of such excellent results that Shi Han achieved his goal and appeared in this year's Australian Open qualifiers, which is also the first time Shi Han has stood on the stage of Grand Slam qualification.

It's a pity that due to the gap in strength and experience, Shi Han did not pass the first round of the Grand Slam qualifiers. Despite this, she managed to claim her first set win at a Grand Slam qualifier. Last week, Shi Han was seeded seventh in the tournament at the opening ITF W75 event in Brisbane. Unfortunately, despite Shi Han's best efforts in the first round, he still lost to Ukraine's Zavatska in the deciding set.

Shi Han stayed in Brisbane this week and is still playing as the seventh seed. In the first round, she played a derby battle with compatriot Zheng Yushuang. In this game, Shi Han also took the lead. However, perhaps because of her many victories over Shi Han, in the subsequent matches, Zheng Wei won two sets in a row and defeated the youngster. After the victory, Zheng's instant world ranking reached No. 288, which is the highest world ranking Zheng has achieved since entering professional tennis.

Despite losing the game, Zhou Yi and Zheng Yushuang are still young after all, so everything is possible in the future. Hopefully they can have a good record in the next games. A lot of times, the world of tennis is really just a teahouse. In this teahouse, there are many tea customers who are already quite famous here, and there are always fledgling newcomers who come here in anticipation of tasting the sweet tea. And the author, in fact, is just an obscure storyteller in this teahouse. I hope that my article can bring some fresh information to the fans, whether it is praise or criticism, maybe just to be able to make me go further. That's it for today, and it continues tomorrow.(Source: Tennis Home Author: Yixin Jushi)