| AUGUST 2008 |
Chinese players can have their Grand Slam doubles and mixed titles, their rare top-20 singles rankings or quarters at the majors, but the reason the Chinese government has poured millions into tennis over the past 15 years is simple: it wants, well, it almost demands, medals in Beijing.
“It’s very exciting because it’s the first time in China and in China everyone has been waiting for it,” Jie Zheng, who reached the singles semis at Wimbledon, told IT. “Sometimes it’s hard because Li Ting and Sun Tian Tian won the gold in ‘04 [in Athens] and too many people are looking for a medal again. I don’t want to think about it too much. That’s no good, but sometimes you cannot keep it out of your head. Everyone wants to try and win, but it will be very hard. Sometimes I get more nervous thinking about it, so I try not to.”
In the early ‘90s, the government drew up an “Olympic Glory Plan” which more than implied that its athletes focus on victories in the Games, rather than on tour events.
But pushing the Olympic team concept in an individual, money-driven sport hasn’t come easy. The top players receive support from the Chinese Tennis Association (CTA), but in exchange, are told to come home at times during important tour stretches to play national tournaments, even when it conflicts with tournaments such as ‘05 Wimbledon. Some, like Shuai Peng, balked when told that she must give a hefty share of her earnings (said to be up to 65 percent) to the CTA. Others like Na Li, China’s highest ranked singles player ever, chaffed under criticism from the association. But that’s the way things work in an authoritative state that tries to show it’s sunny side to the world, but at home, frowns on disobedience.
“I have to thank The Plan,” CTA head coach Jiang Hongwei told China’s national paper. “Without the Olympics, I don’t think the nation would invest so much money. [But] in a highly individual sport, emphasizing national pride and team spirit is very difficult.”
Whether China can succeed is still debatable. China has a slew of good doubles players and a few solid singles players (Peng reached the third round of Wimbledon and Zheng had the tournament of her life is slinging, low, laser like groundies into the corners in upsetting No. 1 Ana Ivanovic) but none are favored to medal against pumped up players from Russia (think Sharapova and Safina) America (the William sisters and Lindsay Davenport) and Serbia (Jankovic and Ivanovic).
And if the Chinese don’t medal, will the bundles of cash China threw into travel, national coaches, foreign coaches, psychologists, nutritionists and doctors be seen as worth it? “We are in a highly professional sport in which making money is the number one task,” Jiang said. “I was really frustrated when some players wanted to leave the team over money issues. At the same time, we are keeping the traditional national sports training system to ensure athletes win glories for the nation. We need a balance.”
But while balance might occasionally be achieved while the pros are on the road, it is not always the case at home. Chinese officials have been frustrated with the progress of their male players, none of whom have cracked the top 500 in singles. The women have been more responsive, but at a decent cost.
Juniors train at facilities where boys and girls work out separately under banners that hold messages like, “Grow in Painful Struggle and Develop in Spurts.”
“Women know how to eat bitterness,” infamous coach Sun Jinfang told the Wall Street Journal.
Jiang has coached the top women for the past 20 years. Now, after taking time off to study with the USPTA in the U.S., he has become more flexible. Back in the ‘80s, players weren’t allowed to travel much. Now they do and they have reaped the match-tough benefits of navigating the free-form world of the tour. The CTA now takes less of player’s winnings and allows family members to travel on tour. Both Zheng and Li travel with her their husbands.
“We have tennis with Chinese characteristics,” Jiang said. “We are driving on a bumpy road. But despite the difficulties, the situation is improving. We learnt how to battle through the battles.”
On tour, consistently winning skirmishes has taken on the characteristics of Mao’s Long March. Jie became the first Chinese to break into the French Open fourth round in ‘04, and cracked the top 35. In San Diego in ‘05 Peng broke by stunning Elena Dementieva and Kim Clijsters (who said Peng had top 3-potential.) Li reached the ‘06 Wimby quarters and Jie and Yan Zi won the ‘06 Wimbledon and Aussie Open doubles.
But cracking the top 20 in singles was another matter. As consistent as some of the players were, they lacked creativity and the size of their hearts and lungs were questioned. Peng spent ‘07 under the tutelage of Michael Chang, but unlike the former French champ couldn’t gut out tight matches. “The problem is their stamina,” Jiang said. “They couldn’t deal with the intensity of the tour and became vulnerable.”
Painful losses and key injuries took much of the luster off, but ‘08 has turned out differently. Sun Tiantian held up the Aussie Open mixed doubles trophy with Serbian Nenad Zimonjic and then Li and Zheng returned and began to progress gradually. But after parting with Chang, Peng had a horrid January-April stretch, where she only won five matches, and was in danger of missing the top-56 entry Olympic cut. She entered Roland Garros on the bubble of qualifying and knew that to clearly make the cut, she had to last more than a day. When she took the court against Anastasia Rodionova that was all that was on her mind. “I knew I was on the line and if won the first round I would be in,” she said. “I felt so tight. The first day we played, and then it rained, and we didn’t play Tuesday and then Wednesday we finally played.” She finally prevailed 6-0, 2-6, 6-3, but not before her nerves were nearly shot. “You feel like cuckoo [clock],” she said, pointing to a beating heart. “Ooof!”
Before the French Open, Peng had an epiphany that was forced on her by a tragic event. On May 12, while playing in Rome, the Sichuan earthquake struck, killing 87,000 and was stunned. “That changed a lot for me,” said Peng. “Before when I lost five first rounds in a row, I was really sad. I was asking, ‘Why do I feel like this,’ it was like something is broke in me. When I saw that people lost their children and didn’t have homes [I realized] it’s much harder [than my life] and I’m lucky. At least I can play and I have a life. A lot of fans and coaches want us to win medals, but there are only a few who can do it. We have a lot of pressure and it makes us nervous, but there it was too sad — the kids die and they lost homes and then the highways broke and the water was going in and so many people got sick. The cities were broken. It was really sad. I was crying.”
Like Zheng -- who donated her entire portion of her Wimbledon purse ($373,000) to the earthquake victims -- Peng is planning on lending a helping hand in Sichuan. With a more worldly perspective, when Peng strikes her first Olympic ball, she’s hoping to be in a calmer place. “The target for me is not to win anything, just to try to play my best and enjoy it,” said Peng. But calm and serene play may not be possible. Instead of going to North America for the hard court circuit, Chinese players will go home and train — and train and train and train. The golden, interlocking rings will be staring them in the face every day, which will turn the Olympic village into a pressure cooker. “Winning gold medals is our ultimate goal,” Jiang said. “Success in ‘08 is the completion of the mission.”
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