Serving up an ace Finale

CTA Tour concludes in style to highlight huge strides made by domestic talent

With the country's top players in action and a series of promotional events held on the sidelines, Macao served up a tennis feast by hosting the domestic tour's year-ending finals to elite standards on and off the court.

As the season finale of the Chinese Tennis Association's domestic circuit, the CTA Tour SJM Professional Finals, was staged in Macao for the second straight year last week, with the four champions — men's and women's singles and doubles — collecting their shares of the 2.2 million yuan (about $316,000) prize pool at a grand ceremony on Sunday.

Cheered on by enthusiastic fans in the special administrative region, former national championship winner Liu Fangzhou beat Gao Xinyu in straight sets to claim the women's singles title, while rising star Cui Jie routed veteran Bai Yan in just 67 minutes in another straight-sets win to dominate the men's draw.

Yang Zhaoxuan and Jiang Xinyu won the women's doubles before Terigele and Zhang Ze finished Sunday's final session as the men's doubles champions.

Launched by the CTA in 2020 during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the tour comprises four tiers of events — up to 1,000 categories under normal circumstances — and concludes each season with a national championship that adopts a similar format to the year-ending finals on the ATP and WTA tours.