World No.35 Zheng Jie was the first player to reach the 2010 Australian Open quarterfinals after a 7-6(5) 6-4 upset of seed No.31 Alona Bondarenko.
Zheng has now become the first Chinese ever to reach the quarterfinals of the Australian Open, while two years ago at Wimbledon she became the first player from her country to reach semifinals of a Grand Slam event.
“I feel tennis is going up very quickly in China,” said Zheng who played a large role in raising the popularity of the sport in her country. “We have a good tournament, the China Open, and you can see lots of the newspapers talking about tennis much more now. We have more top players now too.”
Zheng will face Russian Maria Kirilenko in the quarterfinals.
