\u201cToday, for me, it\u2019s really special because Sam is on court,\u201d Zhang said. \u201cThis is why I\u2019ve been waiting for the third one for so long! Thanks, Sam.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zhang later spoke about the significance of having her former partner watching on.<\/p>\n
\u201cI played with Sam. We won Australia, we won US Open, and also Rennae Stubbs was on court,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery time when I saw them, I can feel they give me energy, like Elise. So now we feel like not only we two on court. We feel like more energy, three, four. Then we team, coach, we have, like, big team.\u201d<\/p>\n
The title also carried added significance for Zhang, arriving exactly 20 years after Chinese duo Yan Zi and Zheng Jie captured the women\u2019s doubles crown in Melbourne, upsetting Stosur and Lisa Raymond.<\/p>\n
\u201cZheng Jie is on court,\u201d Zhang pointed out. \u201cTwenty years ago, she won the first Grand Slam in China. Thank you for helping me so much.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite their decorated doubles resumes, the title marks the pair\u2019s first Grand Slam triumph together, surpassing their previous best result as runners-up at Wimbledon in 2022.<\/p>\n
Their Melbourne campaign was not without drama, having saved three match points in a second-round escape against Iva Jovic and Victoria Mboko.<\/p>\n
Danilina and Krunic, meanwhile, impressed en route to the final, with a semifinal upset of defending champions Taylor Townsend and Katerina Siniakova.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cToday, for me, it\u2019s really special because Sam is on court,\u201d Zhang said. \u201cThis is why I\u2019ve been…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":449635,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-449634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=449634"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449634\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/449635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=449634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=449634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=449634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}