Qinwen Zheng says what she has been struggling with in practise recently which her coach has been trying to correct

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Qinwen Zheng has won her first match of the clay court season at the Charleston Open.

Zheng made a slow start to the year, winning just one of her first four matches in 2025 that included a shock second round defeat at the Australian Open.

This was a big surprise to some, who had predicted Zheng to have another big year after a breakout season in 2024.

Zheng, who has ambitions to win a major, has now started to turn things around in recent weeks after working on certain aspects of her game.

Qinwen Zheng says her coach has been helping her correct something

Zheng has had a few coaching switch-ups over the past couple of years, but reunited with Pere Riba at the end of 2023 after he had a brief stint with Coco Gauff.

Riba was missing from Zheng’s camp in Australia earlier this year after undergoing hip surgery, but has now returned to help her return to her previous form.

This includes at the Charleston Open, where Zheng picked up her first win of the clay court season over Maria Sakkari.

Despite beating the former world number three in straight sets, Olympic champion Zheng told the Tennis Channel that she had been struggling with the transition from the hard courts and her coach has helped her in that process.

“Actually it was not easy because I was struggling a bit in the practise because my coach always tells me that you are playing too flat, we are on clay court not on hard court,” said Zheng. “I am just happy today that I played the right game on a clay court.

“Put more topspin and then stepped in when I could. On clay always prepare for more rallies, on hard I can finish in serve and one or two shots, but on clay I have to get ready for more balls back.”

Qinwen Zheng happy with her serve in Charleston Open win

The change of surface was not the only thing that Zheng needed to work on from her last match, with the serve also being improved.

Zheng was beaten by Aryna Sabalenka in the Miami Open quarter-finals, hitting just 47% of her first serves in the court.

With the world number eight often having to resort to her second serve against Sabalenka, where she won only 17% of her points and was consequently broken on seven occasions.

This is something that Zheng was keen to point out after her win over Sakkari, where she was not broken once on the slower clay where serve is often less effective.

“I would say that my serve performance today was better than my last match,” said Zheng. “In my last match I had terrible first serve percentage so I was trying to practice these days to get my first serve better and was specific in hitting my target zone.”

Zheng will hope that her serve is firing once again when she plays her third round match against 13th seed Elise Mertens.