In the first gold medal tennis match at Paris 2024, the Chinese mixed doubles pair of Wang Xinyu and Zhang Zhizhen lost a nailbiter 6-2, 5-7, 10-8 to the Czech Republic’s Tomas Machac and nine-time Grand Slam doubles winner and Tokyo women’s doubles gold medalist Katerina Siniakova.
Machac and Zhang, often competing as teammates in doubles in professional games, this time stood opposite each other.
The match started at a lightning pace, with neither pair dropping many points on their service game and both staring down each other’s fluid attacking game.
However, it was China who blinked first after they were broken on Zhang’s serve in the fifth game. A series of unforced errors from Zhang gifted the Czech team easy points that Machac was able to capitalize on for the first break of the match.
The Czech fluidity continued as Siniakova and Machac put Wang’s serve under pressure. Wang started the 7th game with a double fault and ended the game with a double fault, gifting the Czechs the second break of the set. Siniakova made no mistake serving for the set as the Czech Republic eased to the first set in just 20 minutes.
Despite the disappointing opening act for China, the pair’s spirits remained high, even joking with Machac about a paper-thin net call in the first game. Building into the second set, the Czech serve looked as unbreakable as in the first, with the Chinese pair never able to find a crack in the defense.
On the positive side for China, the kinks that Zhang and Wang had with their service in the first set had been ironed out. For the first time, the Czech serve came under pressure in the sixth game of the second set after the Chinese team started to get the measure of Machac and hit some superb winners to take the game to deuce. Yet, despite the warning shots, China just lacked the accuracy to finish off the game and swing the match back in their favor.
With the Chinese pressure building on the Czech serve, China finally broke through in the final game of the second set. After taking the game to deuce and surviving two match points, Zhang turned the game around with an instinctual backhanded smash to give China the advantage, before Wang hit her own backhanded winner to take the match to a third set tiebreak.
Taking a 3-0 lead, before the Czechs fought back to level the tiebreak, neither pair could take a decisive lead. With the score tied at 8-8, Zhang double-faulted, before Machac served for the match point. A serve and a mishit return later, and it was the Czech pair hugging each other, the first Czech Republic gold of the Games secured.