Chinese former Grand Slam winner Zheng Jie devotes to youth training

BEIJING - Chinese first tennis Grand Slam winner Zheng Jie has been working on tennis youth training for a couple of years in her country. A youth tennis competition named after her was initiated in 2010, which has benefited hundreds of teenage players over the past eight years.

"The teenagers are the future of tennis in China, only when there are more young people participate in the sports, can we have greater chances to choose potential ones to produce top players," said Zheng, a current tennis coach in Chinese Sichuan team.

"I found that our Chinese youth players are less experienced than their counterparts from abroad at international events. One of the reasons is the Chinese players didn't play matches as many as those foreign youth," said the 2006 Australia Open and Wimbledon Championships doubles title winner, "This is the reason why I came up with the idea to launch a youth tennis tournament and that is Zhengjie Cup."

The tournament has went into the ninth edition this year. At the first stop in Shanghai last weekend, there were about 300 youth players participating in the competition.

According to Zheng, there are seven more stops this year.