What gold medalist Zheng Qinwen learned about herself at the Olympics, and hopes to bring to the tour

NEW YORK—It’s not every day that you can have a drink made by an Olympic gold medalist. Earlier this week, though, a few revelers at The Martinique New York in Manhattan had that chance when one of their fellow guests, Zheng Qinwen, took a few minutes away from her US Open practice schedule to show off her mixology skills. One thing was immediately clear after she popped behind the bar: She wasn’t shy about grabbling the bottle and giving her customers a healthy pour. It was easy to forget that, at 21, Zheng is barely old enough to drink in this country.

Shy, bashful, demure: These aren’t the words that come to mind when you meet Zheng. Self-assured, aspiring, quietly determined: Those are closer to the mark. She’s tall and slim, with an easy laugh and a thoughtful, soft-spoken way of answering questions and engaging with people. But as an athlete, she also knows she’s carrying on an important legacy in her country—and she’ll go anywhere, and do anything, to take it as far as she can.

WATCH: Zheng Qinwen's TenniStory ⤴️

A native of Shiyan, China, Zheng idolized her nation’s most famous tennis player, Li Na. Zheng likes to say that the two-time Grand Slam winner planted “dream seeds” in her heart when she won her major titles. At 8, just a few months after she picked up a racquet, she moved to Li’s hometown, Wuhan, to train. Not long after, she began working with her Li’s coach, Carlos Rodriguez. In 2019, at 16, she and her mother took a leap halfway around the world, to Barcelona, where she began working with her current coach, Pere Riba.

It didn’t take long for Zheng to surpass her idol at the competition that may mean the most to their compatriots, the Olympic Games. In Beijing in 2008, Li reached the semifinals, but finished a heartbreaking fourth. Last month on the terre battue in Paris, Zheng went two matches better when she became the first Chinese tennis player to win gold. She did it the hard way, too, by beating Iga Swiatek, the reigning queen of clay, for the first time in seven tries.

“I can finally say to my family, and say to my father, ‘Come on, I just made history,’” a smiling Zheng said afterward.

Her country certainly noticed. Last week, Zheng interrupted her touring schedule to travel to Beijing for a special awards presentation with President Xi Jinping. By Wednesday, she was in New York, getting used to the—potentially fast—courts at Flushing Meadows. She was in the Big Apple, but she’d hardly had a chance to notice.

“New York is one of the biggest cities on the tour,” Zheng said when I talked to her last week. “I just wish I could go to some restaurants, especially Chinese. But right now, I just want to focus on the practice.”

The next question facing Zheng is the one that always comes up when a young player has a breakout performance: Was it a fluke, or is she for real?

That may not seem like a fair, or particularly urgent, question to ask of a 21-year-old who will likely be playing professionally for at least another decade. But it’s going to be asked. Early this year, after she made her first Grand Slam final at the Australian Open, her game took a nosedive for four months.

Zheng says she’ll learn from that experience.

“After the Australian Open, where I achieved something really good, I had a lot of struggles because my focus went down. I’m not able to maintain the same level,” she said. “One of the things I discussed with my team after the Olympic Games is, if you’re going to take a step forward, you need to stay on the same level, don’t go too much up and down.

“I’m hoping I can stay with the same motivation.”

“Motivation” is the crucial word when it comes to transitioning from the Olympics back to the WTA Tour. At the Games, you play for your countrymen and women, and you only have one chance to win a medal for them every four years. On the tour, you play for yourself, and whether you win or lose, there’s always another tournament the next week.

Zheng says winning gold taught her that the more pressure you’re under, the more patient and uncompromising you need to be with herself. It also taught her what she's capable of when she does those things.

“When I played the Olympic Games, I said anything that’s disturbing you, or bothering you, just ignore that,” she said. “‘Come on, it’s once every four years. You don’t have too many chances.’

“When I play a regular tournament, I don’t think like this. If I get disturbed by something during a match. I’ll lose my focus. At the Olympics, my focus was a different level. I had a really tough schedule, but I didn’t complain. If I can keep this mentality in the usual tournaments, don’t complain about anything, just do the best that you can, that can help a lot.”

Zheng says her win over the WTA’s No. 1 player, Swiatek, was a revelation to her.

“To play against Iga, you have to play very smart,” she said. “Just to have the power, I don’t think is enough. It shows how important it is to have patience. It’s important to use 100 percent of your energy. When you put 100 percent of your energy, you can feel your game is different. When you feel you have those energies, your tennis becomes much better than you thought.”

Zheng will need to be patient and energetic right out of the gate at the Open. On Monday at 11:00 AM, she’ll play Amanda Anisimova, a hard-hitting American who will have the crowd on her side, and possibly the quick courts as well. But Zheng says she’s ready for anything.

“I never think the court is fast or slow, the conditions are the same for everyone,” she says. “You play in the stadium, your opponent plays in the stadium, too. I’m just gonna adapt.

“If the court is faster, it will be better for me, because I have a big serve. But even slower is fine, because I’ve got good fitness. The best player can play well on all the surfaces.”

It’s a sentiment that Li Na, who won one Grand Slam title on hard courts and one on clay, would appreciate. Her legacy, she must know, is in good, and appropriately ambitious, hands.