Chapter 292: Sudden Arrival

Winston-Salem was formed in 1913 by the merger of the two cities of Winston and Salem. After nearly a century of development, it has now grown into the fourth largest city in North Carolina. It is based on industry and has developed industries such as tobacco, textiles, electrical equipment, and furniture.

Among them, because the world-famous Camel brand cigarettes are produced here, the city has also earned the reputation of Camel City.

However, since 2011, the ATP 250 Gold Series has settled here and become the last stop of the US Open series. This has made Winston-Salem always attract countless fans every summer and become a gathering place for tennis enthusiasts.

The schedule of the Winston-Salem Gold Tournament is a little special. In the first two weeks, there are two top-level North American Masters Series tournaments, and all the top players come out in full force; in the last three weeks, there is one week of Grand Slam qualifiers and two weeks of Grand Slam main tournaments, which attract global attention.

Generally speaking, the top ten and top 20 players in the world will take a two-week break after participating in two Masters tournaments to conserve their energy for the Grand Slams. They will skip the Winston-Salem tournament anyway, which is just a gold tournament and only higher in level than the Challenge Tournament.

It is also because of this that the Winston-Salem Gold Race is often dim and lacks attention.

But the reality is often full of surprises.

Occasionally, some top players are in poor form in the two Masters tournaments, are eliminated early, their warm-up intensity is not enough, and their game feel is not adjusted to the best. They urgently need to adjust their form through competition before the start of the Grand Slam. Then Winston-Salem is the best choice.

In addition, young players like Gao Wen, who are energetic but inexperienced and need to maintain their form as they get closer to the Grand Slam, often go to Winston-Salem to compete. Professionals also look forward to discovering young rookies who may upset the US Open through this event.

The same goes for McDonald and Giron, who are preparing to travel to North Carolina to compete, but they are both unable to participate in the U.S. Open, not even the qualifying rounds for the time being, so this is their last event of the North American season, and they look forward to showing their strength.

For various reasons, Winston-Salem has attracted a lot of attention.

On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, Gao Wen was still practicing hard in Los Angeles. After finishing their previous races, MacDonald and Jillon had already set off for Winston-Salem from Vancouver and Montreal respectively.

Both players will participate in the qualifiers, so they need to arrive early. The two rounds of qualifiers will also require a draw, and then the players who advance to the main competition will be decided before Sunday.

But Gao Wen didn't need it. Tobias applied for a wild card for him and successfully won the favor of the organizing committee:

The NCAA national championship is only part of the reason; the three consecutive weeks of challenges are an important bargaining chip.

After his outstanding performance in July, Gao Wen's world ranking soared, from no ranking in early July to 193rd in the first week of August.

The three championships accumulated 260 points, which allowed Gao Wen to occupy a place in the top 200 of the world professional rankings.

It is for this reason that when Winston-Salem received the wild card application, it approved it without much hesitation.

If you carefully browse the list from 101st to 200th in the world, you can see many interesting names:

157, Alexander Zverev.

184, James Odensnick.

185, Zhang Ze.

187, Tanasi-Kokinakis.

193, Gao Wen.

194, Borna-Coric.

They are all familiar faces. Apart from the familiar faces of Zverev, Odensnik, Kokkinakis and other challenge opponents, there is another name that is very worth noting -

Zhang Ze.

This male tennis player from China was born in 1990. In 2012, he entered the French Open qualifying lineup based on his ranking, becoming the second Chinese male professional tennis player in the Open Era to participate in the four Grand Slam singles qualifying tournaments. In the same year, he set a series of new records in the world rankings, ranking 154th, the highest ranking ever for a Chinese male player.

At the Australian Open earlier this year, he went a step further and became the first Chinese male tennis player in the Open era to pass the qualifying test and enter the Grand Slam main draw.

Although his overall performance this year has been unsatisfactory and his world ranking has slowly declined, Zhang Ze is still the undisputed number one Chinese male player.

Then, there is Gawain.

Gao Wen is only eight ranking places away from surpassing Zhang Ze to become the new number one player in China, and is 27 points behind in points. If Gao Wen can perform well in Winston-Salem, then a reversal will be a matter of minutes. Next, Gao Wen will strive to become the first male player in history to win a Grand Slam main draw.

Significance, extraordinary.

Quietly, Gawain was making history.

The younger generation born after 1990 is still working hard, while the younger generation born after 1995 has already caught up, which has many similarities with the development trend of world tennis.

Precisely because of his romantic fantasies about the Grand Slam tournaments, Gao Wen hopes that he can perform well in the Winston-Salem Gold Tournament. What he lacks most now is competition experience. If he does not want his knees to tremble when he sets foot on the Grand Slam schedule for the first time, he needs more competition experience.

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call……

call……

Another orange state ended. After Gao Wen's breathing stabilized, he packed his things and went to the bathroom to take a shower, finish Friday's training, and then take a flight to Charlotte in the evening. After arriving there, he will take a bus to Winston-Salem.

After taking a quick shower, Gawain left the shower room. After changing his clothes, he checked the time and realized that his training was slightly delayed by ten minutes. He also needed to go to the airport with Tobias, so he had better speed up to avoid missing the flight.

So he moved quickly, even putting aside the idea of ​​opening the system to check his recent gains. He hurriedly left the bathroom and was about to leave the gym when he saw Tobias appear at the elevator entrance.

Gawain thought he was the one who delayed the time, and Tobias came over to urge him, so he quickly apologized.

"Sorry, sorry. I'm ready and can go now. I did two more sets of planks today, so the time was a little longer."

Gao Wen turned off the lights in the gym and jogged over.

Tobias made a joke, "Seeing that your steps are still so light, you should still have some energy left. Why don't you practice a little more in the gym?"

In fact, he has gradually adapted to the intensity of the orange state. Gao Wen's training endurance is indeed getting better and better. Even if he experiences the orange state, he will no longer be exhausted.

But Gawain keenly caught the deep meaning in Tobias' words and paused, "Why, I still have time to continue training? I thought we needed to rush to the airport..."

"No, thanks. The wild card has been cancelled."

(End of this chapter)