Future of women's tennis in China bright
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Being the first Asian to enter a Grand Slam final, Li Na's success will spark a tennis boom in China, where the sport has long struggled for recognition in the shadow of badminton and table tennis, Women's Tennis Association (WTA) managing director told Xinhua on Sunday.
Last year, Li and fellow Chinese player Zheng Jie reached the semifinals in the Australian Open, marking the first time two Chinese players had advanced that far at a Grand Slam.
Li, who became her country's first Top 10-ranked player on the back of that effort, went one step further earlier this week, saving a match point and ousting World No.1 Caroline Wozniacki of Denmark 3-6, 7-5, 6-3 in semifinal, making history to become the first Asian player to enter a Grand Slam final.
Fabrice Chouquet, Asia-Pacific region's managing director of the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour hailed for success of Li, who has won herself glories to be described by Chinese Tennis Association head, Sun Jinfang as the "pioneer" and national sports hero on a par with NBA great Yao Ming and star hurdler Liu Xiang.
"Well, the WTA have never been happier," Chouquet told Xinhua reporter during the celebration event with Li on Saturday.
"A women tennis player in China has never been stronger, and it is an extrovert moment for us."
He said the WTA has been aware of the potential of women's tennis women in China, and this is why for a number of years the WTA has been making a significant investment in China to capitalize on this interest at both the professional and grassroots level.
In 2008, it set up its regional corporate office in Beijing, and elevated the status of the China Open to one of the most important tournaments on the tour calendar.
The WTA has also launched a Chinese-language website, and is currently undergoing talks with Beijing authorities about increasing the number of professional tennis events in China as early as 2012.
"The traffic (of the Chinese WTA website) has been enormous in the last two weeks, and we have approximately four millions fans now," Chouquet said.
"It is a tremendous impact, yesterday (on Saturday) the tennis match was one the biggest ever coverage of tennis events. It reached probably 135 million households from the CCTV, I am just talking about China, imagine the rest of the world.
"The impact (of Li) is enormous, the future of women's tennis in China is bright."
He added that the China Tennis Associated has also been doing a great job to bring in international experienced coaches to China so as to take care and help the younger players to become professional in the sport.
Meanwhile, Craiig Tiley, Australian Open Tournament Director said the tournament has been focusing to promote tennis is Asian region, as he noticed that players in Asian Pacific has done very well over the past few years.
"The double is in success and the boys in India do well," Tiley told Xinhua on Sunday. "We are constantly doing to promote tennis in the Asian regions."
The closer location compared to U.S. Open and Wimbledon is one of the advantages for Asians audiences to attend the tournament in Melbourne, Tiley said, adding that the time zone is very similar, as well as the support they get from the community in Australia.
"If you have a look, I don't think you find that in U.S. Open or Wimbledon, in Australia you get a much wider and wider of nationalities," He said.
"And we encourage it, we want the fans from Asia Pacific to come to support their national player"
He said the tournament, which has approximately 650,000 people attending in the past two weeks, have never seen players from China, India, Malaysia, Thailand or Japan five or 10 years ago, but the situation has changed now.
Tiley goes on to praise the ability of Li, saying that she is playing well.
He said to get the final of a Grand Slam have never been done before to players in China, and Li's achievement is a physical start to lead the way to the explosion of tennis in China.
"We like everyone to know that this Australian Open belongs to people of Asia, belong to people of China, it just happened to be called the Australian Open, because it is in Australia," he said. "I think we are going to see a Grand Slam in the future years a lot more be landing from China to come watch tennis."
China currently has five players in the top 150 rankings.
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