MELBOURNE: Chinese qualifier Zhang Shuai said she was living the dream Thursday after beating Alize Cornet for only her second ever Grand Slam win -- on her birthday -- to keep her remarkable Australian Open campaign alive.
Zhang, who had lost all 14 of her previous Slam matches before this week, almost retired last year but after stunning world number two Simona Halep in the first round, she followed up with a disciplined 6-3, 6-3 win over the 33rd-ranked Frenchwoman.
Zhang, countrywoman of two-time major champion Li Na and ranked 100 places below Cornet at 133, said her sudden success, after years of failure at Grand Slam level, was hard to take in.
"It's like a dream come true. I'm looking forward to the next match, I don't want to stop right now, I want to keep winning," said Zhang, who will play America's Varvara Lepchenko in the third round.
Once ranked 30th in the world, her serial failure at Grand Slams and a horror 2015 in which she fell eight times in the first round and six times in qualifying convinced her it was time to call it quits.
But her team told her to give it one more shot at Melbourne Park this year, and now on her 27th birthday and she has ended up as the last Chinese player left in the singles draw.
Zhang said the astonishing win over Halep was "the number one exciting thing" of her life, made all the more special by having her parents in the crowd watching for the first time in her career.
Losing in the first round at all 14 Grand Slam matches she had played before Melbourne this year -- the worst record of any top-300 player -- would have seen others give up, but not Zhang.
"I try to be positive. In my life, I don't want to be negative. I want everything positive," she said.
"I don't want to always be thinking bad things. Maybe, yeah, I lost 14 times first round. Maybe 14 times gave me a lot more energy to work hard."
Zhang, who has won one WTA title since her debut in 2006, at Guangzhou in 2013, next faces Lepchenko after the American beat Spain's Lara Arruabarrena in two tough sets.
Li, who retired in 2014 as the reigning Australian Open champion, ignited an explosion in tennis interest in China, considered a key market for the sport's future.
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