Tennis

Top youngsters on show in Nanjing

By Yu Yilei (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-11-18 09:41

NANJING: When Zheng Jie took up tennis, at the age of 10 with a local youth team in Sichuan province, she had to share one coach with more than 20 children on a solitary court.

Most of the time she spent her training sessions hitting a ball against a wall.

So, when the 26-year-old saw a group of children in crisp uniforms being coached by international coaches, person-to-person, she could not help but feel a little "jealous".

"The current training conditions for tennis are much better than before," Zheng said while attending the "Mercedes-Benz Swing for the Stars", a national junior-level tennis development program, as the main guest. "It's as different as night and day."

Tennis has been growing rapidly in China over the past few years and that was made evident by Zheng's historic semifinal appearance at Wimbledon last year and a local tennis playing population of 8 million, eight times the figure of 2004.

Zheng said meeting the 'stars in making' provided her with a great amount of pleasure and she was happy for them to live in a good time for the sport.

"I strongly believe they will achieve much more than us (current players) due to such good training conditions," Zheng said. "During the early days of my career I could not even have a permanent Chinese coach, let alone an international one."

The program, initiated by the Chinese Tennis Association and Mercedes-Benz, gathered more than 30 of China's elite youth players in Nanjing after 10 clinics this year.

The youngsters are instructed by Jeff Bearup, the former USPTA Coach of the Year, and Eric Beard, head performance coach with the Boston-based New England Academy of Tennis.

"The interesting thing is they can hit the ball really well but miss some fundamental things," said Bearup, the head coach of the program.

Since its launch, in April last year, the program has reached out to more than 1,000 elite youth players in China. Earlier this year a new program called "Tour 2016", which will focus on cultivating potential medal hopefuls for the 2016 Rio Games, was added to the agenda.

"The program will have a long-term impact on the development of tennis in China and I am looking forward to discovering more talent," said Sun Jinfang, head of the national tennis administration center.

Zheng asked the public to be patient.

"This is a long-term program and you cannot ask for immediate results. However, I think it will bring out a lot of good players in four or five years. They can only be better than us considering their good physical condition and training regimen," she said.