Top Asian women's tennis doubles partnership Li Na and Zheng Jie, from China, failed to make it to the last eight of the Toray Pan Pacific Open Tennis Tournament held in Tokyo in February.

Their early exit from the competition, which ranks just below the four grand slam events, came as a shock given their success in 2006.

Last year the achievements of Li and Zheng, as well as other female players, made Chinese tennis history and inspired a younger generation to take to the courts.

At the Australian Open tennis tournament this year, one of the four grand slam events, Li made a strong showing by advancing to the fourth round after beating the 10th-ranked Dinara Safina from Russia. Her emphatic 6-2, 6-2 win in 73 minutes made her the first Chinese female player ever to enter the fourth round of the Australian Open.

Before flying to the Australian Open in 2006, Zheng and Yan Zi, who formed a doubles partnership at the competition, booked return tickets for January 26th, one day before the final game. It was a move that reflected the low expectations of their coaches and the two athletes themselves. No Chinese tennis pair had ever made it to the semifinal, and nobody expected 2006 to be any different.

However, one victory led to another for the young pair and Zheng, 24, and Yan, 23, ended up having to cancel their early flight to play in the final, which they went on to win.

Six months later, the two Chinese girls made history again, this time by walking away with the women's doubles champion's trophy from Wimbledon, the world's oldest tennis competition. On the champion's podium, the rising tennis stars appeared to be more confident and cooler than half a year earlier. After winning the final, Yan sent a short message to her father and also to her coach Wang Liangzuo reading, "Great! we did it again!" The reply from her coach read, "Enjoy your victory!"

In fact, the pair's success over the past year has given them a considerable taste for enjoying victory. In the year-end new international rankings for 2006 they were ranked the number two women's doubles players in the world. Their strong showing at the Federation Cup, the flagship tournament of women's tennis, helped China to book a place in the top eight of that competition for the first time after claiming a four to one victory over Germany. The Chinese national team will now play against the top seven teams in the world in April.

Confidence building

Talking about her unexpected success Zheng said, "We were given very low expectations." Growing up in the same city, Zheng and Yan have known each other since they were children. They played as a doubles team for the first time in 2001, representing the provincial team in the national games.

Their success is even more surprising given that both Zheng and Yan were once deemed physically unsuitable for playing tennis professionally. The five-foot-four-inch Zheng was refused for being too short while Yan was refused for her slim figure. Zheng recalled when the provincial team wanted to give up on her, her coach insisted on her staying, promising that he would train Zheng to become one of the top three players in China. Zheng proceeded to make it into the national games at the age of 18 and as a result was selected as a member of the national team.

Recalling the earlier days of her tennis career when the prospect of success looked unlikely Zheng said, "Athletes could easily be crushed by low self-confidence. Luckily, I am an obstinate girl and was always stimulated by other people's negative predestinations. I said to myself that I should try hard to prove them wrong, which led to my success today."

Wang Liangzuo, who has been the coach for Zheng and Yan since November 2002, added, "This kind of never-yielding attitude and rising confidence is an important reason for the Chinese women tennis team's eye-catching performance in recent years."

Both Zheng and Yan have their own "secret weapons" on the tennis court, according to Wang. For Zheng it is her talented mind for tennis and for Yan it is her fast pace.

Chinese tennis players used to suffer from low self-esteem and preferred to practice with other Chinese players when receiving training abroad, said Wang. "Even if the self-contempt in your eyes is hardly noticeable, it will give your competitor the chance to win the game," he added. To overcome their ingrained fear of foreign players Wang matches all of the athletes he tutors with foreign players in training. His strategy has worked so well for Zheng and Yan that more often than not it is their opponents that begin to lack belief in their ability to win.

China was a late starter in the tennis world compared to many other countries. Before the Athens Olympics in 2004, where China collected a record-breaking 32 gold medals, the Chinese tennis team was given the minimal task of winning only one match. They went on to astonish the world when the unknown team Li Ting and Sun Tiantian won the country's first ever tennis gold.

Recalling the experience, Sun said, "Even before the game with number one seed Paola Suarez and Tarabini Patricia from Argentina, we still believed we had half a chance of winning." Her confidence was not groundless since the two pairs had competed several times before. Li added, "Confidence does not come from nowhere. We had accumulated plenty of useful experience from quality training and professional games."

Shift of training models

Chinese top-notch tennis players are mostly the products of a three-tier state-supported training system consisting of sports academies, provincial teams and the national team. Many experts have attributed China's breakthroughs in women's tennis to a new path of sending young players abroad to participate in all top professional tournaments. It is a strategy aimed at achieving good results in the Olympics, but one which has led to China's top tennis players matching the best in the world in terms of frequency of games and training intensity.

Between 1996 and 2000 the Chinese tennis team drafted and implemented an Olympic strategy of "nurturing top players and making women's doubles the breakthrough event." During this period, a group of young players, including Li Ting, Sun Tiantian, Li Na and Peng Shuai, were selected as the potential talents and frequently sent abroad for training and competition.

Sun said, "Intensive participation in professional competitions holds the key to our quick progress as it has helped us to understand adversaries better and learn advanced training methods."

Up and coming 20-year-old Sun Shengnan added, "The training model of intensive professional competitions is essential to my growth." The government sports authorities send her to almost every junior tournament of the International Tennis Federation. In February 2004, she paired with Zhan Yongran and won the Australian Open Junior Championships after crushing the top seed in the final.

In the second half of 2002, the Tennis Administrative Center under General Administration of Sport launched another policy to upgrade China's tennis training methods. The tennis administrative center started to match one player with only one coach. In the past, in China's national tennis team, one coach tutored several athletes at the same time, which inhibited the implementation of tailored training.

"China's tennis team must explore the best combination point between the state-supported sports system and international professional tennis trends and absorb the advantages of both systems," said Sun Jinfang, Director of the Tennis Administra-tive Center. She explained that her center has tried to explore new models of training tennis talents. Besides the traditional three-tier system that is mainly financed by the government, the center also encourages individuals to train and compete on their prize incomes and to sign sponsorship deals with companies that can shoulder at least part of their training expenses.

Jiang Hongwei, head coach of the Chinese women's tennis team said, "The Chinese team will be approaching the world leading level if it can stick to the path of professional tennis." However, what worries him is that the unfinished shift in focus has left many unresolved problems.

According to Alan Ma, former coach of Peng, foreign professional players put everything at stake which spurs their desire to win on the court, while many Chinese players are less hungry for victory.

"In China, the government's generous investment has greatly improved the training facilities of local teams, which has made many athletes contented with the current situation since everything comes to them too easily," he said.

Tactics for 2008 Olympics

On the court of the Australian Open 2007, the new pairing of Sun Tiantian and Sun Shengnan advanced into the last eight before losing to Chinese doubles partnership Zheng Jie and Yan Zi. Despite their success, the promising new pair was split up at the Pan Pacific Open Tennis Tournament 2007, where Sun Tiantian was matched with Li Na, a move that reflects strategic changes to China's tennis team.

"To prepare for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, our best option would be having two pairs or even three pairs of women doubles to guarantee the gold," said Xie Miqing, Vice Director of the Tennis Administrative Center. "The advice to each player before a match used to be 'play your game,' but now we add, 'keep a clear and cool mind about your ranking and state,'" he noted.

The Women's Tennis Association rankings are updated every two weeks and only the top 60 seed players in the world gain direct entry onto the Olympic tennis courts. Other players have to go through preliminary competitions.

"Since we have our eyes on the Olympics we will try all out to encourage players to play in professional games to maintain their ranking," said Xie. n