Chinese tennis has made great strides in reaching the highest levels of the sport in the twenty years since its Olympic debut in Athens in 2004. The Wimbledon Championships this year serve as evidence of this rapid improvement. Chinese athletes commemorate an incredible campaign at this year’s Wimbledon, when the nation’s next-generation players sent notice they are a growing power.
Athletes who introduced China to the world
The desire to compete was ignited by retired athletes Li Ting and Sun Tiantian, who unexpectedly won an Olympic gold in the women’s doubles.
After that, China became interested in tennis after its most well-known athlete, Li Na, won their first individual Grand Slam championship in 2011 at the French Open and again in 2014 at the Australian Open. Over the past ten years, there has been an exponential growth in the number of Chinese tennis players entering the elite ranks, courts being developed, and international events being held in China as a result of her heroics.
Now, 11 Chinese athletes competed in the men’s and women’s main draws at the All-England Club this year at Wimbledon, the most ever for the nation at any of the four major tennis tournaments.
Chinese athletes’ achievements today
China features six players ranked in the top 100 on the Women’s Tennis Association Tour, led by world No. 7 Zheng Qinwen. In the women’s top 100, the only countries with more players than China are the US, Russia, and the Czech Republic (13, 12, and 8, respectively).
China’s current generation benefited from early exposure to professional tennis and more access to international competitions, thanks to the legacy of their predecessors.
“I am really proud of how far the game has come in China. Sometimes I envy the current generation very much for the advantages they have now,” said retired star Zheng Jie, who won the 2006 Wimbledon women’s doubles with Yan Zi.
“I think players now know better, and earlier, about what it is like to live, breathe and play as a pro than what we did in the beginning… When we started, we had no clue at all about being a professional tennis player, a very limited number of high-level tournaments to play at home, and did not know how to develop our game in the right way,” she added.
In recent games, Wang Xinyu, ranked 36th in the world, was one of the stars of the women’s draw as she battled her way into the fourth round, marking her finest major performance to date and the farthest any Chinese woman has gone in the Wimbledon singles tournament.
“The chances of competing against the more established international opponents and measuring my game against them were a great lesson,” Wang expressed.
Another remarkable Chinese tennis player, Zheng Qinwen, a finalist at this year’s Australian Open, and winner of the WTA’s Most Improved Player of the Year award in 2023, admitted: “Now after 15 years, we know more about the world, we know how everybody is playing, and we try a lot of different coaches to really improve our games. So all of us are starting to have more knowledge about tennis.”
Source: Tennis Grandstand