Mainland’s top 16 tennis players to compete in Macau
The 2021 CTA Tour SJM Professional Finals (Macau) & National Tennis Championships will be held from December 6-12 at the Macau Tennis Academy in Rua de Ténis in Cotai, with the event looking to recruit and train locals to be ball kids at the tournament, according to a statement issued by Chinese Tennis Association (CTA) on Friday.
According to the statement, the organisers of the event, together with the Macau Tennis Association, are looking to recruit and train ball boys and ball girls locally.
The statement goes on to say that the training will be divided into two parts: theory and practical. Ball kids, who initially pass the training assessment, will enter the “Macau Ball Kids Activities” at the end of November, where 50 will be chosen to participate in the finals week from December 6-12.
The CTA Tour Professional Finals in Macau has invited the top tennis players from the mainland to compete for 2.2 million yuan in prize money. Throughout the year, the 2021 CTA Tour has held tournaments in six locations across the Chinese mainland: Anning, Changsha, Changzhou, Guangzhou, Linfen, and Rizhao. The top 16 men’s and women’s players who have scored the highest national rankings in the mainland are eligible to participate in the Macau Finals.
The top three men’s singles players are Zhang Zhizhen, Li Zhe and Bai Yan; the 2020 CTA Tour Professional Finals men’s singles champion Wu Yibing; and all of the women’s singles champions from the six tournaments this year: CTA1000 Anning women’s singles champion Wang Meiling, CTA800 Rizhao and CTA800 Changzhou women’s singles champion Liu Fangzhou, CTA1000 Changsha Wangcheng women’s singles champion Guo Hanyu, CTA 800 Linfen women’s singles champion Gao Xinyu and CTA1000 Guangzhou Huangpu women’s singles champion Zheng Wushuang, according to the statement.
The statement underlined that the tournament is jointly organised by the Tennis Administration Centre of the General Administration of Sport of China (国家体育总局), CCTV Sports & Youth Programme Centre, CTA and the Macau Sports Bureau (ID), with the support of the Department of Publicity and Culture of the Liaison Office of the Central People’s Government in the Macau SAR; SJM Resorts, as the title sponsor; the Macau Tennis Association as co-organiser, and jointly operated by Beijing CTA Tour Sports Management Co. Ltd., International Media Port (Shanghai) Cultural Development Co. Ltd. and Colorfull (Macao) Cultural Technology Consultancy Limited.
The tournament will be broadcast live all on CCTV media platforms, according to the statement.
The Beijing-based Chinese Tennis Association (CTA – 中国网球协会) was set up in 1953.
Macau residents are welcome to register to be a Ball Kid at this link: https://forms.gle/nhFjwsbSMnKghjMaA.
This handout photo from the CTA website shows a group photo taken at the 2021 CTA Tour Huangpu-Guangzhou competition on October 31.
