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"Just like Zheng Qinwen's generation of tennis players grew up watching Li Na, Zheng Qinwen has now become a role model for a younger generation of players," Zheng Qinwen's first coach and former coach of Shiyan Amateur Sports School Chen Hongming told China Newsweek.

Even after retiring for many years, there are still parents who come to ask Chen Hongming to see if their children are good candidates for playing tennis.

From discovering her daughter Zheng Qinwen's athletic talent to finding a coach based on Li Na's training path and doing her best to support her daughter, Zheng Jianping has also been questioned: In a highly professional and commercial sport like tennis, how can one train a child to become a world-class athlete?

An unconfirmed news is that the cost of training Zheng Qinwen is as high as 20 million yuan. Zheng Jianping did not respond directly to the investment in professional competition and training. He replied to China News Weekly: "We are just ordinary people. We don't want to be famous. We just want to quietly hope that Chinese tennis will get better and better."

The father of Zhang Zhizhen, the Chinese male tennis player who just won the silver medal in the mixed doubles tennis at the Paris Olympics, also mentioned in a previous interview with the media that it would cost about 20 million yuan to train a tennis player to break into the top 100 in the world.

"Professional tennis is a high-investment, high-return, high-risk sport. If you want to become a professional player, high cost investment is the most basic. Whether you can transform into a good professional player, of course, there are many other factors. Now the age at which professional players can achieve good results is later than before, which means that continuous and more investment may be required." Wang Jihong of Galaxy Bay Professional Tennis Club, a well-known professional tennis training institution in the Asia-Pacific region, said. "Not all families can bear such pressure."

It costs about 20 million yuan to train a tennis player to enter the top 100 in the world. Source: Visual China

"12 years old, a hurdle to turning professional"

Every time when he accompanied his child to practice basketball on the sidelines, You Zhi complained in his heart that it was "really expensive." But when he thought about how his daughter went from being tired of training to actively playing basketball over the past half year, he felt that it was "worth it."

My daughter is five years old and has been playing tennis for almost a year. She is still in the enlightenment stage. She has changed six or seven institutions before she found a satisfactory coach. After all, tennis is difficult to learn. It is common that she cannot play tennis after one year of practice. "Repetitive training itself is boring. The coach must be passionate and love tennis to inspire the children's interest."

The foreign teacher who loves tennis that she finally found charges 1,000 yuan per hour, and parents have to pay an additional 200 to 300 yuan per hour for the venue fee for each class. "It's not just about cultivating skills, but more importantly, it's about the impact on character." You Zhi gave an example, such as the concept of winning and losing. During training, the coach would encourage the child to "never say I can't do it", but would also tell her that "a win or loss doesn't mean anything."

You Zhi is not the most expensive parent. Another young player trained by this coach, who is also in the enlightenment stage, has already increased his training to five times a week. The training expenses alone are five times what You Zhi paid. In first-tier cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, such charging standards can only be considered medium.

"From the perspective of the entire youth tennis training cycle, the investment in the introductory stage is the least." Chen Hongming said that this stage mainly cultivates children's interest and focuses on playing. The training expenses are mainly coaching fees and venue fees. The fees vary greatly in different cities. Some families invest 20,000 to 30,000 yuan each year, while others invest 40,000 to 50,000 yuan. There is no unified standard. The consensus in the industry is that the introductory stage training market is the most mature from various perspectives such as coaching level and price selection.

Chen Hongming said that because parents attach great importance to sports, children are generally exposed to tennis at a younger age, and some start playing at the age of four or five. If they persist until the age of eight or nine, they usually enter the next stage of training, gradually increasing the time and difficulty of tennis training, formalizing the training, and thus transforming interest into sports skills. At this time, the family investment will also double, and if a higher-level coach is replaced, the cost will naturally rise.

"The provincial team usually selects young players in the 12-14 age group. If you continue to play tennis, you will basically have to enter a higher stage of professional training." Chen Hongming said that at present, the country, provinces, cities or social clubs have tennis competitions of different levels for young people, forming a national youth tennis ranking series. Generally, the youngest age to register is 8 years old, and you can play until 18 years old. There is an age group every two years, and you can "beat the big with the small", but not "beat the small with the big". Players accumulate experience and improve their ball IQ and ball skills through competitions, and are discovered by high-level coaches and institutions, and even signed with brokerage companies. It can be said that actual combat is the best way to test whether young players have the ability to continue on the path of professional sports.

The reason for selecting players around 12 years old is that the body of teenagers is basically fully developed at this time, "when you can see the turning point of the physical condition in adulthood." Chen Hongming said that whether a child can go on the professional sports path is usually affected by "family", such as parents' height, family sports history, whether there are family genetic diseases and other factors. "Most professional players basically travel around the world all year round. Tennis is very physically demanding, so you have to make a rational choice based on the actual situation."

"Chinese children generally do face the hurdle of retiring at the age of 12." When You Zhi was making sports plans for her daughter, she learned that when 12-year-old children enter junior high school, the academic pressure increases. Coupled with their own poor performance in competitions, the family's financial conditions are unable to support them, and other reasons, many young players will choose to give up training at this time.

"Playing basketball cost me a house in the center of Shenzhen"

For families who continue to train for professional competitions, "assuming they play about 20 weeks of competition a year, the travel, food and accommodation expenses alone would be 200,000 to 300,000 yuan. If you add the training fees, the number would be even higher," said Wang Jihong.

A senior practitioner who has been working in the field of youth sports training for more than 30 years told China Newsweek that sports competition is all about results. Once you have reached a certain level in domestic competitions, you should find a way to send your children to European and American tennis schools for training and to participate in international youth tennis competitions. If men get in the top 3 and women get in the top 6, they are basically on the professional path. Otherwise, you will have to spend more time and money on trial and error.

As early as the age of 11, Zheng Qinwen went to IMG Academy in Florida, USA at the suggestion of his father. He showed amazing talent in an open tournament for young tennis players around the world, thus winning the favor of IMG, the leading agency in the tennis world, and signed a contract.

"Tennis is a very personalized sport. The path of a successful athlete may not be successfully copied to other players." Wang Jihong gave an example. Some players were late in enlightenment and started playing tennis in their teens. Some children may have developed physically late and did not start to participate in competitions so early, so they were unable to show their abilities early. For teenagers, results can be accumulated by increasing the amount of training. Many seedlings who were once optimistic about the future eventually disappeared in the professional arena. They were "tired" at the age when they should have achieved results. Therefore, in terms of youth tennis training, it is important to achieve results in stages, but there is no very strict age division for each stage. What is more important is to protect their long-term love for tennis before turning professional.

When a tennis player embarks on an international competition, the investment is bound to increase exponentially. Wu Fang, the mother of the famous men's singles player Wu Yibing, once admitted that Wu Yibing spent a lot of money on learning tennis when he was young. The cost before he was 15 years old was more than 1 million yuan, and the training and competition expenses in the following years added up to more than 10 million yuan.

According to the official website of IMG Academy, depending on the registration age and course, the annual tennis tuition for 2024-2025 ranges from US$69,400 to US$93,900, equivalent to approximately RMB 490,000 to RMB 670,000.

"Adding the expenses for competitions, food and lodging, equipment, stringing, treatment, and private training, the actual annual expenditure easily exceeds one million RMB." Wang Jihong reminded that a large part of the expenditure is used for "private training". After regular training, it is usually necessary to hire a one-on-one private trainer.

Training a professional tennis player is not something that an average family can afford easily. Zhang Ruien, the 15-year-old tennis player who won the gold medal in the women's singles at the first National Student (Youth) Games last year, said in the media that his daughter started playing tennis at the age of 3 and a half, and has already spent the money to buy a house in the center of Shenzhen.

“Only those ranked in the top 100 in the world can support themselves”

Since you have invested so much, why do you have to go abroad to compete during the youth training stage?

"Compared with table tennis and badminton, tennis is more international, professional and commercialized. To compete with European and American players in the professional arena, going overseas for training and competition in advance is a must, and the earlier the better." The aforementioned youth sports training worker who has been in the industry for more than 30 years said that compared with other ball games, tennis is not popular in China due to venue restrictions and difficulty in getting started. There are only a handful of coaches with experience in international competitions. Most of them only train their own students and lack experience in guiding international players and top competitions.

Wang Jihong further introduced that the help provided by international coaches is not limited to improving skills, but can also help players match resources in various aspects. For example, where are the good clubs in the competition area, quickly connect with physiotherapists and rehabilitation therapists, help athletes find suitable competition partners, and even get wild cards for top competitions.

"The greater advantage of having a professional team that has been in the professional tennis world for many years is that it helps athletes make the most scientific competition and training plans." Wang Jihong said that how to make the most reasonable arrangements in a complex competition system so that players can exercise their technical abilities while getting competition points and bonuses is a subject that requires a lot of energy for athletes to study on their own. It is best to have a team to assist in making decisions based on actual conditions.

The entire team is supported by the players playing in the games.

For example, Swiatek, the first Polish tennis player to top the WTA world rankings, has been traveling around the world with not only coaches and fitness trainers, but also physiotherapists and psychological consultants. To achieve a breakthrough in the tour, hiring a team of professionals has become a trend. However, the more team members there are, the more expenses a player has to pay. It is already very difficult for players ranked outside the top 50 to replicate the same "luxury" team.

"If we lower the threshold to support ourselves with prize money, we can at least be in the top 100 in the world." Wang Jihong said that the top 100 and outside the top 100 are two different worlds. The former can enter the main competition without playing in the qualifiers, with high points and high prize money, while the latter must start from the qualifiers to enter the main competition, and the investment in competition and training needs to be carefully calculated, and even the income cannot make ends meet. Many European and American players have no official support and are responsible for their own profits and losses. Losing a game means no income, and subsequent transportation, food and accommodation may be affected.

Take the US Open as an example. In 2023, Zheng Qinwen made it to the quarterfinals. Even though he didn't win the trophy, he still earned 430 points and a prize of $455,000, equivalent to about RMB 3.3 million. The 2024 US Open, which is about to be held, will increase its annual prize money to $75 million, up 15% from last year, and continue to rank first among the four Grand Slam prizes.

However, the reality is cruel for most professional athletes. According to the 2021 Global Tennis Report released by the International Tennis Federation (ITF) on its official website, there are currently 3,619 professional players ranked in the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) and the Women's Tennis Association (WTA), from 113 countries. Among them, 273 athletes have been ranked in the top 100 in the world, including 137 male professional players and 136 female professional players, accounting for 6.41% and 9.18% of the ranked male and female professional players respectively. In other words, in the professional arena, athletes have to get into the top ten percent to get enough income to cover the cost of competition and training.

"Professional sports are also like thousands of troops crossing a single-plank bridge." Wang Jihong said frankly. At a time when tennis is more popular in China than ever before, parents and children need to make rational judgments on whether to firmly choose the path of professional tennis.

(At the request of the interviewee, You Zhi is a pseudonym in this article)

Reporter: Li Mingzi