On Saturday in Beijing, Juncheng Shang had one of the worst days of his career in front of his home fans, and he was not afraid to say so. The 21-year-old was swept aside 0-6, 3-6 by world No. 2 Alexander Zverev in the second round of the China Open, and afterward admitted that, for the first time in his life, he found himself wanting to leave the court.
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“The match was pretty easy for him and really hard for me. For the first time in my life, I just wanted to leave the court as quickly as possible. I wasn’t feeling well, I was in pain, and I was uncomfortable,” Shang said.
He explained that the discomfort traced back to abdominal pain that had first appeared during a doubles match earlier in the week.
“When I woke up this morning, my abs were quite stiff and I didn’t know if I would be able to play at full intensity. I warmed up carefully and everything felt fine, but after the first break, I started to feel discomfort again and the pain gradually got worse.”
Zverev, for his part, was simply ruthless. He landed 76 percent of his first serves, hit nine aces, and won 89 percent of his first-serve points. The dominance did not stop there. The German won 53 points in the match, while his opponent only managed to win three games and 24 points throughout the match. It was also the first-ever meeting between the two players, with no prior head-to-head history to speak of before Saturday.
The win extended a remarkable stat Zverev has against left-handers. He is 48-1 against lefties in the last 49 matches and 92-19 overall in his career, which is the third-best record in the Open Era.
That said, physical setbacks are not new for Shang. He reached a career-high ranking of No. 47 in October 2024 after winning his first tour title in Chengdu, which made him the second Chinese man to win a tour-level singles title in the Open Era, after Wu Yibing, and the first player born in 2005 to do it.
But the road after Chengdu has been far from smooth. Shang played only 14 tour-level matches in 2025, four of them during his run to the semi-finals in Hong Kong, which straddled the turn of the year. A foot injury led to surgery in March and kept him sidelined for six months, while fresh fitness trouble has held him back in 2026 as well. After runs in Doha and Dubai in February, then stayed off the Tour until Washington in July.
“You start from a point that you can’t walk and you can’t run. You are watching all your friends competing on Tour, so it’s not the most fun, I would say. It depends how you take it. If you’re thinking positive, it can be good. If you’re thinking negative, then you might be sad the whole time. It takes time and patience,” Shang said in September this year.
Shang has also spoken about the importance of managing his comeback carefully.
“I think there’s a fine line with finding rhythm and trying to overwork yourself, which I’m talking with my coach and my family about, trying to do the right thing, because if you come back too soon, you might end up injured again, or you might end up with low confidence.”
The loss is still bound to sting a bit because Beijing is also where Shang was born, so the week had extra significance for him. However, he can take some comfort in what his father and coach had asked him to remember.
“My dad and my coach told me to just focus on every single shot and to not overthink things. They told me ‘it’s totally normal if your opponent plays better than you, because they’ve been playing all year long, while you’ve just come back’,” he told China Daily in Montreal earlier this year.
Despite the physical struggles in singles, Shang’s week in Beijing has actually gone well on the doubles side. Paired with Alexander Bublik as a wildcard entry, he has helped the duo fight through two consecutive three-set battles. First rallying from a set down to beat Francisco Cerundolo and Arthur Rinderknech 3-6, 6-4, 1-0 (10-7) in the opening round, then edging Maximo Gonzalez and Andres Molteni 7-5, 4-6, 1-0 (10-8) in the quarterfinals.
That run has put Bublik and Shang in the semifinals, where they will battle Sander Arends and David Pel to secure their spot in the final, and the home fans will have something to cheer for after his singles defeat.