Qinwen Zheng has praised her mentality after launching a third set comeback to defeat Mirra Andreeva in Beijing.
The Olympic Gold medallist is into the semi-finals in Beijing after defeating the 17 year-old 5-7 6-0 6-4.
However Zheng had to work hard for her place in the last four as she came back from 4-2 down to defeat Andreeva.
After the match Zheng praised her mentality as she continues to push for a place in the WTA Finals at the end of the season, “At the beginning of the match I’m trying to be more calmer, trying to be more gentle with the opponent because I know she’s more younger,” Zheng told the WTA website.
“But after what I see with my tennis today, I say, I’m not going to win today by my tennis, I’m going to win today by my mentality. Today in the match, there were lot of up and downs. I’m just happy they were there supporting me. I feel if it’s not in China Open, this match could be more trickier than that.”
Zheng is now into her fourth semi-final of the season having reached the last four at the Australian Open, the Olympics and Palermo.
Now the Chinese number one will take on Karolina Muchova for a place in her first WTA 1000 final and now sits at number eight in the race to Riyadh.
In any normal year that could be good enough to qualify for the WTA Finals but this year only the top seven qualify with Barbora Krejcikova already qualified.
Heading into her semi-final with Muchova the head-to-head is tied at 1-1 with Zheng winning their meeting in the Palermo final this year.
