As the ATP and WTA Tours move from Beijing to Shanghai and Wuhan, China’s long wait for a big presence in men’s tennis looks a little shorter.
Zheng Qinwen has established herself as a force in women’s tennis in 2024 by winning an Olympic gold medal and reaching the Australian Open final, but China’s male players have made striking success of their own in the last fortnight, even if none of them are on a level with their WTA compatriot just yet.
Men’s tennis has languished behind the women’s game in China. Zheng, who is into the China Open semifinals in Berlin, has followed on from the two Grand Slam titles that Li Na won in the 2010s. There are six Chinese women inside the WTA top 100, compared to three Chinese men in the ATP top 100. Until this year, China laid claim to just one ATP title — Wu Yibing’s triumph at the Dallas Open in 2023, which is a 250-level event and the lowest rung on the main tour.
The underperformance was such a source of shame that in early 2022, Chinese journalist Zhang Bendou said: “Men’s tennis in China has been a myth for many years. China can send rockets to space, among many other great things, but we just haven’t produced even one ATP top-100 player.
“We have been waiting too long.”
Zhang Zhizhen soon righted that particular…
