Beijing News (Chief Reporter Sun Haiguang) On January 31, Tian Yucheng, the daughter of diving Olympic champion Tian Liang, made her debut in the international junior tennis tournament. In the ITF (International Tennis Federation) Singapore Junior Championship J30 this morning, Tian Yucheng, who participated as a wildcard, defeated Singapore's Dong Yizhuo in the first round. The tournament in which Tian Yucheng competed was an ITF J30 tournament, which was a junior tournament, not a professional tennis tournament.
Tian Yucheng was born in 2008 and has liked to play tennis since he was a child, and has watched professional tournaments such as the China Open with his father Tian Liang many times. At the 2020 Australian Open, Tian Yucheng also got the opportunity to coach Hewitt, the former world number one in the ATP.
Tian Yucheng was coached by former ATP world No. 1 Hewitt (left). Photo: Tian Liang Weibo
At this week's ITF Singapore J30, 14-year-old Tian Yucheng competed on a wild card, her first international junior event. In the first round, which ended this morning, Tian Yucheng defeated Singaporean Dong Yizhuo, who was also a wildcard, 6-3, 6-1. The match was originally scheduled to be played yesterday, but Tian Yucheng was suspended due to rain when he led 3-2 and postponed it to today.
It should be noted that the event that Tian Yucheng participated in was an ITF J30 tournament, which is a stop in the youth tournament of the ITF World Tennis Tour, not a professional tennis event. The ITF created the World Tennis Tour Junior Tournament to give players aged 18 and under the opportunity to showcase their talent and gradually transition professionally.
Currently, the ITF World Tennis Tour Junior Tournament takes place around 650 tournaments a year in 140 countries and territories around the world. The event is divided into 6 levels, from the highest to the lowest, J500, J300, J200, J100, J60 and J30, "J" means Junior, and 500, 300, 200 and other numbers represent the points that the champion can get. Tian Yucheng's Singapore J30 tournament is one of the junior tournaments of the ITF World Tennis Tour, where the champion can earn 30 points. From a level point of view, the J30 event in Singapore is only the lowest level competition, and the overall strength of the players is not strong, and the top seed and Singapore's Tan Suyan Junior Ranking is only 321st in the world.
In a previous interview, Tian Liang said that Tian Yucheng is still mainly focused on his studies and does not consider taking the path of professional tennis for the time being, but everything still respects his daughter's choice. If you want to become a professional tennis player, participating in ITF junior tournaments is just the first step. Typically, a tennis player will only consider turning professional in the next few years if he is established in the ITF junior tournament. At present, there is no information about Tian Yucheng on the ITF official website. In the second round, Tian Yucheng is likely to face the tournament's No. 8 seed Anjali Kirana Junato.
Edited by Zhang Yunfeng