As of July , he became the highest-ever ranked Chinese male tennis player. He is the current No. In , Zhang was born to a sports family in Shanghai. When he reached elementary school, his parents let him decide which one of the two sports to continue. He chose tennis because the swimming teachers were strict, partly because of their responsibility of ensuring swimming safety.
In December , he fractured a bone in his left foot after stepping into a pit during a sprinting exercise in a park. Despite losing to Jason Jung in straight sets, Zhang rebounded at the Joplin Futures tournament, recording his first win as a professional against Daniel Yoo , before losing in straight sets to unranked American Gonzales Austin. Zhang lost in the first round of the following two futures tournaments he entered. At the Shanghai Rolex Masters , Zhang β only sixteen at the time β was given a wild card entry into the qualifying draw; he lost to world number sixty one Brian Baker , winning just three games in his debut clash with a top one hundred ATP player.
Zhang continued to play professional events sporadically, managing to come through qualifying to make the Shanghai Challenger's main draw β his first ATP Challenger Tour appearance. Zhang would skip half of the ITF Men's Circuit , finishing the year with only thirteen participations in senior-level events, including a quarterfinal showing at a Futures tournament in Cyprus.
Zhang struggled to maintain consistent form in the following months, exiting in the opening two rounds of every tournament he played in, before winning the Mont-de-Marsan Futures tournament in June; this was Zhang's first ITF World Tennis Tour title. French tournaments continued being the bearers of good results for Zhang, as he followed his Futures title with a second final three weeks later, this time in Bourg-en-Bresse. His ranking bolstered by positive results on the ITF Men's Circuit , Zhang began entering tournaments on the ATP Challenger Tour , though he failed to win any main-draw matches in his first few months on the higher-level Challenger Tour.
Zhang played in the qualifying draws of both the Beijing Open , and the Shanghai Masters , though he failed to breach the main draw of either venue. Zhang rounded out the year with a few early losses in Challenger tournaments.
