Player development: differences by nation [series]

[TennisHack]

Multinational brands like Nike, Lacoste, IBM and Coca-Cola help fund player development, while establishing a foothold in a booming market of consumers with rising disposable income. Attracting sponsors – among them Heineken, Nokia and Mercedes – is not a problem.

China opened its markets to join the World Trade Organization in 2002, and the foreign investment it has attracted since has boasted sport across the board. “Tennis programs in the past were chronically underfunded because they required more money than the government could provide,” notes Lincoln Venacio, the Brazilian-born tournament director of the China Open and the long-time ubersalesman of tennis in the People’s Republic. “They needed sponsorships.”

With the economy going gangbusters – set to overtake the US as the world’s biggest by 2015 according to consensus estimates – China grows ever more attractive to sponsors and television. For the CTA, this means a mountain of yuan to spend on attracting foreign coaches to work with local players, and sending home-grown players and coaches to tournaments around the world.

Lacoste, a sponsor of the China Open, provides apparel to juniors and pays for two young players to attend training camps in France. It also provides 5000 tickets to the China Open to Beijing schoolchildren. In 2001, Nike signed Shuai Peng, then 15, and Na Li, then 19, and arranged for them to train in the US. It was a first for China: athletes released to train with a “foreign agency.”

China’s player development began in earnest in the mid-1990s, when Beijing staged a men’s event for the first time. By the late 1990s China’s game plan was the make a breakthrough in professional tennis, starting with women’s doubles. The leading players were sent abroad for training and tournament experience, and foreign coaches were invited to speak and conduct training in China. (Young players still develop and train in China, rather than relocate to tennis hothouses like Spain and Florida.)

In 2002 came a push to improve coaching methods – or “Implementing Measures for Professional Training.” This resulted in a move away from group coaching to the one-on-one coaching model of pro tennis. Returns flowed quickly.

The first all-Chinese final was played in women’s doubles at Vienna in 2003. Li and Sun defeated Zheng and Yan and went on to win at Quebec City and Pattaya for a 3-0 finals haul. As with their policy toward Hong Kong, the People’s Republic does not let polity trump expediency. In addition to the Sun-Chan partnership at the 2004 Australian Open, mainland players often partner Taiwanese and players from other Asian nations. (At the US Open, Na Li paired in the doubles with Japan’s Rika Fujiwara.)

That China lacks a deep recreational pool to draw from is the No. 1 complaint of its players. The world’s most popular nation (1.3 billion – 71 percent between 15 and 64) has a scant 22 elite tennis centers. According to tennis writer Jun Tang, the elite stream totals only 300 players and 120 coaches. Tang ranks tennis as the ninth most popular sport in megacities like Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin – far behind soccer, table tennis, badminton and basketball. As a young girl growing up in Wuhan on the mighty Tangtze, Na Li played badminton for two years before switching to tennis, and says her old sport and table tennis provide stiff opposition to tennis. “The popularity of table tennis means tennis has a very low profile,” she says. “We need more people playing.”

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The booming Chinese economy (which has expanded by over 10 percent every year since 1981) has created a burgeoning middle class now signing up for expensive tennis lessons and court time. Recreational ranks have swollen to an estimated 20 million players. But many draw a distinction between this “fashionable” tennis and success at the elite level. ITF world junior rankings currently reveal no mainland Chinese players in the top 100. (Hong Kong is represented by 1 boy and 2 girls in the top 100s; Taipei by 3 boys and 2 girls.)

Players who develop to pro standard face a huge cultural adjustment. “If you want to be a Chinese champion, it requires a big adjustment to the environment [including] climate, traveling with a coach, the food, language difficulties,” says the 22-year-old, No. 182-ranked Liu, who joined the national team at 17 and is currently the Chinese No. 8. None of the leading Chinese players speak English, and only Peng resides abroad, in Boca Raton, Florida. While the cultural dislocation that results may have the benefit of making them feel more a part of a team, one of their coaches even suggested it might be helpful for them not to rely on each other exclusively and to mingle with players from the rest of the world.

Aside from Peng, all the leading Chinese are well into the 20s, late bloomers partly because tennis is often taken up as a second sport (Tian-Tian Sun didn’t play competitively until age 12) and because education is so prized in China. Na Li, a university student, made her Grand Slam debut at this year’s Australian Open, a month before turning 23.

As a playing group, the Chinese are double-handed, conservative baseliners – a style that won’t take the world by storm, unless it’s accompanied by explosive athleticism a la the Williams sisters, or Martina Hingis-like genius. But at the US Open, Na Li impressed Lindsay Davenport with her combination of power and spin and deceptive strength in their tight first round. Peng stands out for her double-handed deceptiveness on both sides, while Liu is the only left-hander.

Another obstacle for China’s players is that they don’t decide their own schedules. The progress of early 2005 was disrupted by compulsory participation in China’s quadrennial national games, involving competitions in March, June, and October. As a result, China’s players missed the entire grasscourt season, including Wimbledon. As in other spheres of life in the People’s Republic, political freedoms have not kept pace with economic progress.

A key feature of the Chinese charge is that it’s a female force. On the eve of the US Open, there were eight Chinese women in the top 200, while the highest-ranked Chinese man was Peng Sun at No. 320.

Quizzed about this, the Chinese women cannot offer firm reasons, but the gender divide seems to confirm the minor status afforded to the game in China. Most of the leading women took up tennis not via elite sports schools and talent-spotters, but unofficially through family, who were perhaps keen for their girls to enjoy opportunities denied to them in the past. Liu was introduced to the game at age eight by her mother, a former player. Peng took up the game at the urging of her uncle. Tian-Tian Sun was taught by her parents.

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The irony is that China was expected to produce a Michael, rather than a Michelle, Chang. Chang instantly became the tennis pin-up in China after capturing the 1989 French Open as a 17-year-old – although he was American-born, of Taiwanese extraction, and a Christian. In 1988 and 1989, there were no pro events in China; the following year, the ATP stop in Hong Kong was reinstated, and in 1993, Beijing staged its first pro event – symbolically won by Chang.

By the mid-90s, China was hosting three ATP events – in Hong Kong, Beijing, ad Shanghai – and Chang was successful at all three. He was to win seven of his 34 pro events in China; his legacy was to show the Chinese that they could not just host events but also be winners.

Chinese tennis went big-time in 2001. Beijing was awarded the 2008 Olympics and Shanghai won the right to stage the 2002 Masters Cup. Seen as a risky venture at the time, the event (won by Lleyton Hewitt in a five-set final against Juan Carlos Ferrero, after a sparkling semi against Roger Federer) was a commercial and PR smash. So much so that the Masters Cup stakeholders, after two lackluster years in Houston, could hardly wait to get back to Shanghai.

Away from the bight lights of the ATP and WTA Tours, the CTA was laying the building blocks for a thriving domestic circuit. In 2001, China had 10 ITF events; by 2004 there were 19. These tournaments have been important stepping stones for the current Chinese crop. Na Li, winner of a remarkable 35 ITF events (19 in singles), compiled 52 singles wins in 2000, at age 18. The streak took in eight ITF titles, four straight in China. Gold medallist Ting Li won seven ITF doubles titles in 2000 and 2003, then won her first three pro events – at Vienna, Quebec City, and Pattaya – with Tian-Tian Sun. Peng and Zheng both made their pro debuts at Nanjing in 2000, and both won their first singles events at home.

Since the days of Ping-Pong Diplomacy, pro tennis has courted China. The first pro event, staged in Hong Kong in 1973, was won by Rod Laver. Other past winners of Chinese events read like a who’s who of tennis greats: Ken Rosewall, Jimmy Conners, and Ivan Lendl, right through to Pete Sampras, Jim Courier and Andre Agassi in the 1990s.

Heinekin has been a title-sponsor of both men’s and women’s events in Shanghai; Nokia sponsored the first three women’s events in Beijing; and Mercedes kicked in for the inaugural China Open in 2004 (won by Marat Safin and Serena Williams).

But while Chinese players accumulate WTA titles, the acid test is Grand Slams, and here the Chinese have rarely progressed beyond first-round fodder. Jie Zheng’s fourth round at the 2004 French Open is the mark to beat. At the US Open, all four Chinese women exited by the second round.

The Grand Slam most likely to see a Chinese breakthrough is the Australian Open. Five players contested the Open in 2005, with Na Li charging to the third round in her Grand Slam debut.

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Making the Chinese feel at home, Australia, in its role as Grand Slam of the Asia-Pacific region, has for several years been supplying expertise (in the form of training for players, coaches, administrators and ballkids) and tournament opportunities (in the form of wildcards). It even has a wild-card scheme for Asian officials. While the cost-benefit analysis hasn’t been worked out to the last shekel, Tennis Australia figures a tennis boom in China will be to Australia’s advantage.

Keeping a humble face, the Chinese players recoil from talk of winning the Australian Open and other “unrealistic” goals. Na Li admits she used to be afraid of the national team coach because she didn’t want to put pressure on herself to achieve, but just to enjoy the game. Liu says her goal is to make the Top 50. “I hope to see the first Grand Slam winner from China,” she says, but stresses: “hope doesn’t mean expect.”

Even if there is no Grand Slam winner among the current crop, China is in the game, probably for good. The march is underway. As Lao Tzu hit it right on the baseline over 2000 years ago: “The longest journey begins with a single step.”


Contributing writer Suzi Petkovski previously reported for the Player Development series on Australia in the Feb. 15, 2005 issue.