Rising Chinese star Qinwen Zheng on idolising Serena Williams: "When a girl has that kind of power, everything is so much easier"

Qinwen Zheng explained why she idolized Serena Williams growing up and how that shaped the way she plays tennis.

Zheng is a rising star in the game of tennis who made tremendous progress this year being the only player to seriously push Iga Swiatek at Roland Garros. She improved her ranking since then establishing herself as a player to watch next year and her main inspiration always was Serena Williams:

"Anyway, when I was little I looked up to Serena Williams. I loved her style of play, her aggressive strokes, her charisma, her tremendous forehand. When a girl has that kind of power in the game, everything is so much easier. It doesn't hurt if you also have fast feet, and besides her, I also looked up to Kim Clijsters."

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Zheng plays very similarly to Williams because she hits the ball very hard and never gives up on that tactic. She has a tremendous serve and very powerful groundstrokes making her already one of the toughest opponents on the tour.

She also looked up to Li Na:

"Of course, she [Li Na] took care of writing the history of Asian tennis, as she was the first to win the Big Four tournaments."