In the first set, Daniil Medvedev must have felt like a traveller on a platform with an ICE train speeding past. The set only lasted 29 minutes and while Medvedev was not really up to speed yet, Zhizhen Zhang rushed unstoppably to 6:3. His game was all of a piece. He hardly made any mistakes and really piled on the pressure. He capitalised on his second break point in the sixth game - or rather, his opponent helped him out with a mistake.
But the former number one wasn't going to be knocked off Centre Court that easily. Not even from the first Chinese player to ever make it into the world's top 50 and set new records for Chinese men's tennis almost every month. And so he took his opponent's serve at 4:2. The operating temperature had been reached. The 28-year-old, who reached the final in Halle in 2022, now played almost effortlessly, as he often did. He varied his return position and that obviously unsettled Zhang. The outsider fended off the first set point at 3:5, but then double-faulted on the second. After just over an hour, the match was level again.
Or not really, because Medvedev now had things under control. In the second game of the final set, he capitalised on a break point with a cracking longline backhand past the charging Zhang to make it 2-0.
However, the man from Shanghai fought back again and managed a surprising re-break. After that, both held their serves, with the favourite looking a little more confident. The final tie-break was on the cards. Medvedev initially won the longest rally of the day. The two chased the ball over the net 31 times. The man with the characteristic white racquet took a 4:1 lead - and then lost the thread. The Chinese player had his first match point at 6:5 and when Medvedev's forehand sailed into the net after a powerful return from his opponent, the match was over. For the first time, a man from the Middle Kingdom had reached the quarter-finals of the TERRA WORTMANN OPEN.
