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Zhizhen Zhang was candid about facing his next opponent - Aslan Karatsev - for a place in the semifinals of the Madrid Masters after creating history on Tuesday.
The 26-year-old saved three match points against the in-form Taylor Fritz in the fourth round to become the first Chinese man to reach a Masters 1000 quarterfinal.
After dropping the opening set, Zhang outlasted Fritz in two tiebreaks, bringing up his first top-10 win in his third attempt. The Chinese recovered from a break down in the second set and from trailing 3-0 and 6-4 in the two tiebreaks. Zhang saved a third match point at 8-7 down in the deciding set tiebreak to create history.
Following the win, an ecstatic Zhang cheekily admitted that he was bagelled by his next Madrid Open opponent - Karatsev - in practice:
“I’ll tell you a secret. We had a practice, I lost 6-0 with Karatsev. I’ll do my best. Here everyone is a great player, huge player. They all have some very good results. (I will) try to do the best what I can do.”
In his post-match press conference, Zhang said about his record-breaking exploits:
"First, well, first in Masters, quarterfinal, whatever, first clay court Masters win. It just by the time we will make a living more, and then it's different, yeah."
With his win over Fritz, Zhang is guaranteed to rise to a career-best World No. 66. He will break into the top 50 if he beats Karatsev on Thursday, surpassing his good friend Yibing Wu, who is 55th.
Zhizhen Zhang on his game plan for next Madrid Open match
Zhizhen Zhang knows that the high altitude in Madrid is favorable for his serve.
Providing a sneak peek of his gameplan for his next match, the 26-year-old added about facing Karatsev - who downed the in-form Daniil Medvedev in the previous round:
"Now, I mean, next match, I mean, what I can do is just, again, keep my service game because altitude is helping for the serve. So, I mean, just try to make some like start from the serve, like keep the service game. Then I can have some game to play with other guys."
Admitting surprise at his results on clay and playing at high altitude, he added:
"I prefer on hard. Also, I don't like altitude here. Normally I don't like altitude, because for my baseline, the ball is flying so much because I like to play a little bit longer rally. Then here, bad altitude you cannot play too much rally because you don't control the ball. I was very surprised how I had a result here really."
Zhizhen Zhang won his lone meeting with Karatsev on hardcourt in the Astana Round of 32 last year.
