Zheng Qinwen recovered from 5-0 down in the deciding set and saved match point to beat Madison Keys 1-6 7-6 (7-3) 7-5 in the third round of the US Open, completing one of the tournament's defining individual dramas so far.
Keys, the 22nd seed and 2025 Australian Open winner, swept through the opening set in 23 minutes. She then moved to within a game of victory at 5-0 in the final set and held match point. Zheng found a way back, reeling off seven consecutive games to win the match after two hours and 28 minutes.
The result sends Zheng into the women's fourth round as the first qualifier to reach that stage at the US Open since Emma Raducanu, who won the 2021 US Open title. Zheng has won six consecutive matches at the 2026 US Open, including three qualifying wins.
Her run in New York has transformed the tournament for a player whose route to the main draw had been unusually demanding.
Zheng, a 23-year-old from China, is the reigning Olympic champion and reached the Australian Open final in 2024. She also made the US Open quarter-finals in 2024, then climbed to a career-high of fourth in the world rankings in 2025.
Her progress was interrupted by elbow surgery in July 2025. Zheng had advanced to the last eight at Roland Garros in 2025 before the injury, but her ranking later fell to outside the top 100 in 2026.
She returned at the French Open three months before the US Open and lost in the first round to Maja Chwalinska. Without the ranking position to enter the main draw directly, Zheng had to come through qualifying at a Grand Slam for the first time in four years.
That made the meeting with Keys a sharp test of Zheng's revival. Keys entered as a seeded player and as the 2025 Australian Open champion, then made the faster start by taking the first set with little delay.
Zheng's response across the final two sets carried her through. She won the second-set tie-break 7-3, then survived the decisive-set deficit to take the last seven games and secure a fourth-round place.
The details of how Zheng saved match point, and whether any issue affected Keys during the collapse, were not provided. The scoreline alone captures the scale of the turnaround: Zheng went from one point away from defeat to a place in the second week, extending a New York winning run that began in qualifying.
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