Zhang Zhizhen

Zhang Zhizhen (Mandarin pronunciation: ; born 16 October 1996) is a Chinese professional tennis player.

He reached his career-high singles ranking of world No. 46 on 26 February 2024, and his career-high doubles ranking of world No. 83 on 12 February 2024.

He has won three singles and two doubles titles on the ATP Challenger, and two singles and two doubles titles on the ITF Futures Tour.

In 2021, Zhang became the first Chinese man in the Open Era to play in the main draw at Wimbledon.

In October 2022, he became the first Chinese male player to reach the top 100 in the ATP singles rankings.

Then, in 2023 in Madrid, he became the first Chinese man to reach an ATP Tour Masters 1000 quarterfinal.

As of July 2023, he became the highest-ever ranked Chinese male tennis player.

In 1996, Zhang was born to a sports family in Shanghai.

His father Zhang Weihua (张卫华) played football in the Chinese Jia-A League as a defender for Shanghai ShenHua.

His mother was a member of the Shanghai shooting sports team and later worked at the Shanghai bureau of China Telecom.

When he was 4–6 years old, he had two weekly swimming classes at kindergarten, while his parents enrolled him to tennis lessons in the weekends.

When he reached elementary school, his parents let him decide which one of the two sports to continue.

He chose tennis because the swimming teachers were strict, partly because of their responsibility of ensuring swimming safety.

From 2008-2013, he was coached by Shao Donglu (邵东路).

At the 2012 Shanghai Rolex Masters, Zhang – only sixteen at the time – was given a wild card entry into the qualifying draw; he lost to world number sixty one Brian Baker, winning just three games in his debut clash with a top one hundred ATP player.

After a six month hiatus from professional events, Zhang made his 2013 ITF Men's Circuit debut in May at the USA F12 challenger, where Greg Ouellette got the better of the youngster in three sets.

Zhang continued to play professional events sporadically, managing to come through qualifying to make the 2013 Shanghai Challenger's main draw – his first ATP Challenger Tour appearance.

Zhang would skip half of the 2014 ITF Men's Circuit, finishing the year with only thirteen participations in senior-level events, including a quarterfinal showing at a Futures tournament in Cyprus.

In December 2015, he fractured a bone in his left foot after stepping into a pit during a sprinting exercise in a park.

March brought Zhang his first victories of 2015, where he bested Jan Zieliński and top-400 player Bastian Trinker in Turkey's 11th Futures event of the year.

Zhang struggled to maintain consistent form in the following months, exiting in the opening two rounds of every tournament he played in, before winning the Mont-de-Marsan Futures tournament in June; this was Zhang's first ITF World Tennis Tour title.

French tournaments continued being the bearers of good results for Zhang, as he backed up his maiden Futures title with a second final three weeks later, this time in Bourg-en-Bresse.

His ranking bolstered by positive results on the 2015 ITF Men's Circuit, Zhang began entering tournaments on the 2015 ATP Challenger Tour, though he failed to win any main-draw matches in his first few months on the higher-level Challenger Tour.

Zhang then made his ATP tour debut at the 2015 Shenzhen Open.

As a qualifier, he defeated Japanese Go Soeda in straight sets in the first round, before losing to sixth-seed Jiří Veselý in straight sets.

Zhang played in the qualifying draws of both the Beijing Open, and the Shanghai Masters, though he failed to breach the main draw of either venue.

Zhang rounded out the year with a few early losses in Challenger tournaments.

In 2016, Zhang signed with the Croatian tennis agent Ivan Ljubicic.

Since then, Zhang's main residence moved to Lošinj Island, Croatia.

In June 2022, he graduated with a degree of human resources management from Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

Zhizhen Zhang began his career in Chico, California, playing on the ITF Futures Tour. Despite losing to Jason Jung in straight sets, Zhang rebounded at the Joplin Futures tournament, recording his first win as a professional against Daniel Yoo, before losing in straight sets to unranked American Gonzales Austin.

Zhang lost in the first round of the following two futures tournaments he entered.

Zhang inexplicably missed the first four months of the 2016 ATP World Tour, and when he did arrive, he returned on the 2016 ITF Men's Circuit.

Zhang lost early through much of April and May, though he did manage to play in both a 2016 ATP Challenger Tour event, and the qualifying draw of the ATP Tour 250 tournament in Nice, the Open de Nice where he lost a third set tiebreaker to future world No. 1, Daniil Medvedev, in the second round of qualifying.

Excluding one quarterfinal at the Futures level, Zhang lost in the first or second round of every tournament main draw he played in.

Zhang finished the year outside the top 800, a drop of four-hundred ranking places from the previous year.

Zhang's ranking hovered 800 from September, 2016, to May 2017, when the Chinese youngster, still only twenty years old, reached a third Futures final, this time in Lu'an, China.

Zhang lost in the final to American Alexander Sarkissian.

Now ranked just outside of the top-700, Zhang continued his ascent, winning the Shenzhen Futures tournament, and losing in the finals of another futures tournament in China (the Yinchuan Futures tournament) two weeks later.

He underwent surgery two months later, and his form dropped significantly until May 2017.