Chinese professional tennis player Zhang Zhizhen is now sponsored by the Swiss luxury watch company Hublot, which is also one of the official sponsors of Serbian tennis player Novak Djokovic. In a recent post, Partners, the company that manages the Chinese player, made the announcement.
Congratulations to our client @zizi_zhang96 on becoming new “friend of the brand” for @hublot , a Swiss watch manufacturer. The post read
This is a positive step that will be game-changing for the Asian tennis scene in general.
Talking about his recent performances, Zhizhen just lost to Andrey Rublev in the first round of the 2024 Dubai Open.
Before that, he took part in the Qatar Open, and his display there was a tad better. He defeated Italy’s Lorenzo Musetti in the first round convincingly, following which he lost to Gael Monfils in the round of 16. Zhang won the first set, but the Frenchman registered a sensational comeback in the next two matches.
However, his biggest achievement in the recent past was winning the Open 13 men’s doubles title alongside Tomas Machac.
They defeated the teams of Emil Ruusuvuori and Patrik Niklas-Salminen. This is one of the best achievements for an Asian player in a long time after Qinwen Zheng became the runner-up of the 2024 Australian Open.
Zhang Zhizhen made history with his first ATP doubles title
Zhang Zhizhen is currently the highest-ranked male Chinese player in the world, which implies that he has the responsibility of representing the nation on the male side of things in tennis right now. This further makes the importance of his deal with Hublot even greater.
Hublot signed Novak Djokovic as their ambassador in 2021, and that was possibly the best decision they could have taken, as the Serb is one of the best players to have ever played the game. Hopefully, their deal with Zhang ends up being a similarly successful one.
He achieved a career-high singles ranking of World No. 46 just recently, in February, after the Dubai Open. His career-high doubles ranking, on the other hand, is World No. 83.
The Chinese has the potential to become a great doubles player, seeing from what he achieved in the Open 13 recently. A few months ago, he also became the first-ever Chinese man to play at Wimbledon in the Open Era. He is 27 years old now and has a long career ahead of him.
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