Dutchman Botic van de Zandschulp, the top seed in qualifying, defeated China's Jie Cui in the second round of qualifying for the ATP 500 China Open in Beijing. The hard-court match finished 6-4, 6-4. The tournament's total prize money is $4.1 million.
Both sets ended the same way: 6-4 in the first and 6-4 in the second. Van de Zandschulp did not drop a single set to his opponent. The gap between the players is significant: according to rank.tennis, the Dutchman is ranked 41st with 1258 points, while Jie Cui sits at 418th with 118 points.
How the players arrived in Beijing
Van de Zandschulp came to Beijing fresh off a quarterfinal run at the US Open. In New York, he opened with a win over Alex de Minaur (6-4, 7-5, 6-2), then won two five-set matches. He beat Zizou Bergs 3-6, 7-6, 4-6, 7-6, 6-3, and came back from 0-2 in sets against Arthur Fils, winning 3-6, 6-7, 7-6, 7-6, 6-4. In the quarterfinal, the Dutchman lost to Alexander Zverev 2-6, 5-7, 1-6.
Before this match, Jie Cui had been playing at the Road to the Rolex Shanghai Masters tournament. There he beat Fajing Sun 7-5, 6-4, before losing to Yi Zhou 6-7, 4-6. Earlier still, at the challenger event in Zhangjiagang, the Chinese player lost in the first round to James Trotter 3-6, 4-6. Match statistics provided by api.tennis.