While many of the WTA’s top players have been enjoying some rest and relaxation in the little more than a week since the WTA Finals concluded in Riyadh, there’s been no R&R in the early days of the offseason for Zheng Qinwen. The Olympic champion has already unveiled a new sponsorship deal with Audi in China, attended the Guangzhou International Automobile Exhibition for it, and appeared at a sponsor event for Gatorade.
Zheng teased her jam-packed offseason schedule after losing the final match in Riyadh to Coco Gauff, where she fell agonizingly short of becoming just the eighth first-time participant to win the year-end title. She led Gauff by a set and a break in the final match, and also had a 5-3 lead in the third set, before losing in a third-set tiebreak.
But there would be little time to dwell on her defeat, nor celebrate the historic season she just accomplished, Zheng said in an interview with Chinese tennis writer Zhang Bendou, due to a myriad of upcoming off-court commitments.
“In the off-season, other players go to Maldives or Hawaii,” she said, “but I’ll have too many commercials to shoot and no vacation.”
The first of those was being unveiled as the new face of Audi in China on Nov. 15, which had previously been teased a week prior on the Chinese microblogging site Weibo. The automaker posted a trailer for its newest cars narrated by Zheng, and teased that its new spokesperson would be making an appearance at the annual expo that has been held for the last 20 years.
