China's rising stars serve notice on tennis world

Home court advantage

Organizers and promoters have also played their part in bringing more high-level tournaments to China to keep pace with the on-court breakthroughs.

From hosting only three professional tournaments before 2010, China has seven WTA tournaments and five men's Association of Tennis Professionals events scheduled this year, and has become one of the busiest destinations on the professional tennis calendar.

The China Open, already the biggest men's and women's combined tournament in Asia, is getting bigger and better this year, thanks to the growing domestic appetite for elite tennis.

In April, the tournament organizers announced the women's tournament will be upgraded to a two-week format with 96 draws, up from 64 last year, joining Indian Wells, Miami, Madrid and Rome as the fifth top-flight WTA1000 tournament.

On the men's side, the ATP500 tournament is expected to continue serving up high-quality players. Grand Slam champions Carlos Alcaraz of Spain, Daniil Medvedev of Russia and Italy's Jannik Sinner have all confirmed that they will return to Beijing this fall, after having featured in last year's star-studded men's draw.

The total prize money for the tournament, which runs from Sept 23 to Oct 6 at Beijing's National Tennis Center, will be increased to a record $13.14 million this year.

As the country pushes the sports sector as a new economic pillar, the growth of businesses around events such as the China Open, has coincided with the central government's call to increase sports industry revenue to 5 trillion yuan ($688 billion) by the end of next year.

During the National Day holiday, visitors to the National Tennis Center in Beijing, where the tournament has been held since 2009, flocked to numerous merchandise outlets, tennis academy booths, equipment stores, and restaurants, signaling growing public demand for sports-related activities and products.

The 2023 China Open, the first event held after a three-year pandemic hiatus, saw multiple records broken. Total attendance for the event hit 250,000, with an on-site consumption of 18 million yuan ($2.48 million).The total viewership in Europe also increased by 33.9 percent.

Now, with China's own top players holding court, the sport's popularity, facilitated by an array of home tournaments, will only grow bigger, said China Open's co-director Lars Graff.

"It will be a huge advantage for spectators to have a chance to see the Chinese players in action," said Graff, a former vice-president of the ATP tour, who's been closely following the sport's growth in China.

"They're doing very well internationally, and now they're coming home to play. I think that tennis is booming right now in China."