Before play began at the 2007 Australian Open, women's doubles partners Chan Yung-jan and Chuang Chia-jung were just surprised and pleased to have received a wild card invitation. Little did they know that their performance in the tournament would soon alter Taiwan's tennis landscape for good.
In the opening set of their January 25, 2007 semifinal match against China's second-seeded Yan Zi and Zheng Jie, who were the defending Australian Open champions, the unseeded Taiwanese duo were able to break serve to win the set. The beginning of the second set was hard-fought, but by the end, Chan and Chuang pulled away to accomplish a breakthrough in Taiwanese tennis--reaching the finals of a Grand Slam tournament. Although they lost the title match in three sets to Zimbabwe's Cara Black and South Africa's Liezel Huber, Chan and Chuang had shown the world that Taiwanese women's tennis was a force to be reckoned with.
Although not as ardently followed as baseball, nor as frequently played as basketball, women's tennis has become a source of national pride for Taiwan. While the nation's male players have performed fairly well--in 2004, 21-year-old Lu Yen-hsun became the first player from Taiwan to break into the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) men's top 100 rankings, and climbed to No. 80 in 2007--their female counterparts have done more to boost Taiwan's image on the international tennis circuit over the past 15 years.
The beginning of Taiwan's rise to women's tennis respectability came in November 1993, when 20-year-old Wang Shi-ting was ranked No. 26 by the Women's Tennis Association (WTA), the organizer of the worldwide WTA Tour. Wang managed to reach the third round in several Grand Slam tournaments such as the French Open in 1995 and the Australian Open in 1997. Given the chance to play at home at the 1997 Asian Championships in Taipei, Wang was unstoppable, winning the ladies' singles event and playing on the victorious doubles and mixed doubles teams. Then, in 1998, 27-year-old Janet Lee made waves by earning a WTA singles ranking of No. 79. Lee reached the third round of the Australian Open in 1999.
But the nation's female players have really come into their own in the past few years. In 2007, Chan and Chuang followed up their surprise success at the Australian Open by also reaching the finals of the US Open doubles tournament in New York, another Grand Slam event, before losing a heartbreaker to France's Nathalie Dechy and Russia's Dinara Safina. Chan and Chuang have ranked in the top 10 so far this year in the WTA doubles rankings.
In January this year, 22-year-old Hsieh Su-wei, who won a gold medal with Taiwan's women's team at the 2006 Asian Games in Doha, Qatar, went farther than both Wang and Lee in singles competition at the Australian Open, reaching the fourth round and becoming the first Taiwanese singles player to make it that far in a Grand Slam event. Hsieh has ranked as high as No. 90 in the world this year in the WTA singles rankings.
More Exposure
Philip Liu, secretary-general of Taiwan's national tennis organization, the Chinese Taipei Tennis Association (CTTA), thinks that the nation's tennis stars may be doing more to promote Taiwan's image than those who play baseball, which is another high-profile sport for Taiwan in the international arena. Among the baseball stars from Taiwan is Wang Chien-ming, the very successful starting pitcher for Major League Baseball's New York Yankees. "Because he's a pitcher, Wang cannot play in all the Yankees' games during the season," Liu says. "This means that Taiwanese tennis players, both men and women, are given a lot more media exposure during the course of live broadcasts of the ATP's or WTA's world tour matches, which are held 11 months out of the year."
Hsieh Su-wei returns a shot at a competition in Taiwan. (Courtesy of Chinese Taipei Tennis Association)
Due to the great competitiveness of Chan, Chuang, Hsieh and other new tennis stars and easy access to international sport channels, an increasing number of Taiwanese have become interested in watching and playing the game. "For university students, including a growing number of women," says Liu, who is also a tennis player and coach, "tennis has become one of the most popular sports courses to take."
Chen Nan, chief coach of Taiwan's national tennis team for international competitions, believes that the willingness of many of the older generation of women's tennis players to give up their sports career for personal or family reasons has allowed younger players to gain more experience and exposure. Philip Liu says that as females "gain maturity faster than males and are exempt from compulsory military service in Taiwan, our female tennis players have fared better than our male players, though the latter are also catching up to be a leading force in Asia." Unlike many foreign players, Taiwanese men over the age of 18 must serve one year in the military--the requirement was 18 months before January 1 this year--forcing them to suspend their tennis training.
An increasing willingness to travel abroad on the part of Taiwanese players and their families has also helped them advance their careers. "In the past, our tennis players usually went to foreign contests as members of a team," recalls Liu Yu-lan, a CTTA board member and one of the first generation of female players on Taiwan's national tennis team. "But now their parents can take them on their own trips to various games around the world," she says.
Philip Liu points out that it was American Michael Chang who first sparked the Asian craze for tennis. Chang's father was born in China and his mother in India, but both grew up in Taiwan and are of Chinese descent. Born in the United States, Chang became the youngest winner of a French Open or Grand Slam singles title in 1989 at the age of 17. Chang peaked at No. 2 in the 1996 ATP world rankings while claiming a spot in the top 10 for several years during the 1990s. In turn, Wang Shi-ting's brilliant play during the early 1990s encouraged many Taiwanese women to take up tennis, and today's young women are also motivated by the more recent international success of Chan, Chuang and Hsieh.
Bright Futures
Coach Chen believes that Tsao Fang-chi, a 14-year-old student at Xin Xing Junior High School in Taipei, has the potential to be a member of the next wave of Taiwan's women's tennis stars. Playing the sport since she was a third-grade student at Huatan Elementary School in central Taiwan's Changhua County, Tsao has developed a powerful style of play and was ranked in the top 10 in the CTTA's rankings for 14-year-old female juniors in February. Earlier this year, she took first place in a juniors tournament for 14 year olds in Kaohsiung, southern Taiwan.
"I train her the same as I would a boy," Chen says, half-jokingly. "Her level of play demonstrates that the gap between Taiwan's female players and their foreign rivals is smaller than that between the male players and their foreign counterparts."
Another gifted young tennis player, Syu Jing-wun, is a 12-year-old student at Guang Rong Elementary School in Taipei County. In April, the CTTA ranked Syu No. 1 among 12-year-old female juniors. Belying her young age, Syu has already become known as a player who does not lose her cool in competition. She won a sixth-grade championship this year in Kaohsiung, and last year won a singles championship for elementary school girls. In order to pursue tennis, Syu and her family decided that she would leave her hometown in eastern Taiwan's Hualien County to attend school--and play tennis--at Guang Rong. Like Huatan and Xin Xing, Guang Rong is a school that specializes in developing tennis players and has a coach who is solely devoted to the sport. Just a couple of years ago, such specialized coaches were hard to find in Taiwan's elementary, junior high and high schools.
Budding star Tsao Fang-chi and her teammates at Xin Xing Junior High School (Photo by Chang Su-ching)
Some of Syu's tennis teammates, both girls and boys, also come from other parts of Taiwan and live in the school's dormitories. These young tennis players take part in regular practice sessions for several hours a day and receive more intensive training during their winter and summer vacations. About once a month, they compete in tournaments that are sponsored by public organizations or private companies and take place around the country. The players' performance in these determines their position in the CTTA rankings, which are released every month.
Coach Chen believes that a significant factor boosting the international results of Taiwan's tennis players in recent years, both male and female, has been the introduction of a system for recruiting and admitting outstanding student athletes to universities that have physical education departments. While they must meet certain academic criteria, the players can now use their performance in domestic or international contests, including International Tennis Federation (ITF) tournaments, in their efforts to win school admission all the way up to graduate-school level. This could be a reason why Syu and her teammate Gao Pei-wun--another top-10 player in the CTTA junior rankings--have been encouraged by their parents to pursue tennis careers. This type of support from schools and parents has enabled the promising young players to further their education while also sharpening their tennis ability. As a result, girls such as Xin Xing Junior High's Tsao Fang-chi have set themselves the goal of one day playing in Grand Slam matches as a professional player.
Corporate Backing
Since the mid-1990s, the Four Pillars Enterprise Co., an adhesive tape manufacturer based in Sanchong, Taipei County, has funded two tennis tournaments each year for elementary school students. CTTA board member and former player Liu Yu-lan says that the Four Pillars Cup matches have played a crucial role in developing women's tennis in Taiwan. Among others, Chan, Chuang and Hsieh first earned recognition through impressive performances at Four Pillars matches. The company is also a major sponsor of Chan and Wang Shi-ting.
In October 2007, Taiwan's women's tennis got a boost from another of Chan's sponsors, the OEC Group--a provider of worldwide freight forwarding services. The group provided the financial backing to establish the OEC Cup Taiwan Ladies Tennis Open, which was sanctioned by the ITF. The US$50,000 event was held at the Sunny Hill Country Club in Taoyuan County and was the only professional women's tennis event to be held in Taiwan in 2007. The tournament saw the inclusion of not only Taiwan's best female players, but also attracted more than 100 top players from 40 countries. The OEC Group has said it plans to increase its sponsorship of the OEC Cup to the level of a WTA-sanctioned tournament in the future. Former player Liu Yu-lan says she hopes to see more local enterprises follow suit, as such competitions provide Taiwanese women players with an opportunity to demonstrate their skills, at home, against some of the world's best.
CTTA's Philip Liu says that one of his organization's primary tasks is to make Taiwanese tennis attractive enough to win the backing of more corporate sponsors. One of the things that must be done, he says, is to build a tennis center in Taipei that meets international standards in terms of size and facilities, because enterprises such as the OEC Group look for appropriate venues when determining whether or not to sponsor events. "If tennis is a product, we have the talent, buyers and marketing force," he says. "But we don't have our own stage to present the product to the world."
The list of tennis players selected to participate in the Beijing Olympics by the International Tennis Federation will be released later this month. Taiwan's Janet Lee and Weng Tzu-ting received a wild card invitation to play in the doubles event at the Sydney Olympics in 2000 and lost to a Ukrainian pairing in the round of 16. At the Atlanta Games in 1996, Wang Shi-ting won her first round match before losing to American Mary-Joe Fernandez in the second round. Given their recent strong play, there is a good chance that doubles partners Chan Yung-jan and Chuang Chia-jung will not only make the list for the Beijing Games, but also challenge for a medal, putting the growing strength of Taiwan's women's tennis on display for all the world to see.
Write to Pat Gao at kotsijin@gmail.com