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    At the Australian Open, Shang Juncheng Leads Wave of Talent From China

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    Shang, once the world’s top-ranked junior, Wu Yibing and Zhang Zhizhen played men’s singles in Melbourne, the first time three men from China are competing at a Grand Slam in the Open era.MELBOURNE, Australia — Shang Juncheng could have chosen his father’s sport of soccer or his mother’s sport of table tennis. His father, Shang Yi, was a leading Chinese midfielder, good enough to play for the national team. His mother, Wu Na, was a world champion in doubles.Instead, their son became a tennis player, leaving home in Beijing at age 11 to train at an academy in Florida.On Monday in Melbourne, it looked as if he had made a wise choice. Shang, a 17-year-old qualifier and the youngest player in the men’s draw, showed rare skill and maturity as he made his Grand Slam tournament debut and became the first Chinese man to win an Australian Open singles match in the Open era.He did it with a gritty, often pretty victory, 6-2, 6-4, 6-7 (2), 7-5, on opening day over Oscar Otte, an unseeded 29-year-old German with a booming serve and a full beard. Shang, who will face the American Frances Tiafoe in the second round, did it on Court 13 with hundreds of fans packed into the grandstand and shouting encouragement in Mandarin and English.“I felt like I was playing at home,” he said.Shang, nicknamed Jerry, speaks both languages fluently after spending so much of his youth in the United States. Though he was interested in soccer in his early years, he said his mother suggested tennis because she believed there were fewer injuries. Shang first played on an indoor hardcourt in Beijing and said he liked it from the start.“For me, the main goal was to become a professional tennis player, even when I was 6 or 7 years old,” he said in an interview. “We started practicing in China in Beijing. That’s where I started on an indoor hardcourt, and my dad used to play soccer in Spain, so he really liked the system and the way the Spanish athletes work.”But instead of basing themselves in Spain, the family chose for Shang to train at the Emilio Sanchez Academy operated by the former Spanish ATP player Emilio Sanchez in Naples, Fla.The 2023 Australian OpenThe year’s first Grand Slam tennis tournament runs from Jan. 16 to Jan. 29 in Melbourne.Missing Stars: Carlos Alcaraz, Naomi Osaka and Nick Kyrgios have all pulled out of the tournament. Alcaraz’s withdrawal means that the Australian Open will be without the men’s No. 1 singles player.Holger Rune’s Rise: Last year, the 19-year-old broke into the top 10, but not without some unwanted attention. We spoke to the young Dane ahead of his second Australian Open.Ben Shelton Goes Global: The 20-year-old American is ranked in the top 100 after a late-season surge last year. Now, he is embarking on his first full season on tour.A Waiting Game: Tennis matches can last a long time. Here’s how players waiting to take the court for the next match stay sharp.Shang later moved to IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla., a longtime hub of the game, and he is managed by IMG, the agency that represents several other Chinese players, including Li Na, who is retired.Li became the first Chinese Grand Slam singles champion, winning the 2011 French Open and then the 2014 Australian Open. The Chinese men have long lagged behind, and progress has been slow. In 2013 at the Australian Open, Wu Di became the first Chinese man to play in a major tournament in the Open era. It took nearly a decade for a Chinese man to win a singles match in a major.Zhang Zhizhen of China was set to face Ben Shelton of the United States on Monday at the Australian Open.William West/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBut Shang, once the world’s top-ranked junior, is the youngest member of a promising new wave that includes Wu Yibing, 23, and Zhang Zhizhen, 26.All three were in the main draw this year in Melbourne. It is the first time three Chinese men have played singles in the same major in the Open era, which began in 1968.On Monday, while Shang was breaking through on Court 13, Wu was on adjacent Court 14, playing grinding rallies with Corentin Moutet of France before losing in five sets.Wu, who also trains at IMG Academy, reached the third round of last year’s U.S. Open, where Zhang lost in the first round. Now Shang, a dynamic left-hander who looks like the most promising talent of the group, has joined them at this level.“Now we have three players in the top 200, and I’m happy that I’m one of them,” Shang said. “The other two are like older brothers to me and have been on the tour a lot longer than me. We do practice a lot, and we do speak about how the game is right now and how we can push forward to a higher ranking. For me, each step is a learning step right now. I’m in a young stage of my career, only my second year playing professional tennis. So, for me, it’s just watching how they do things, like we’ve also watched Li Na and how she did things.”Shang wears an earring in his left ear.“That’s something my dad had for a long time,” he said. “When I was around 10 years old, I was like, ‘I want to be like dad,’ and so we went to get it together. I’ve had it for a long time.”Shang said his parents nicknamed him Jerry when he was very young after the mouse in the Tom and Jerry cartoons.“Tom was the one always getting in trouble and Jerry was the smart one, so they thought it was better to choose Jerry,” Shang said.He plays tennis cleverly, changing gears and speeds often to avoid giving opponents a consistent rhythm. But his top gear is impressive, particularly when he is dictating terms with his quick-strike forehand. Against Otte, he showed some deft volleying touch, as well as plenty of composure: avoiding the temptation to rush between points and gathering himself. He finished off the victory with a bold, leaping backhand winner.Shang won his first-round match with a performance that was both gritty and pretty.Fazry Ismail/EPA, via Shutterstock“He’s a complete player,” said his new coach, Dante Bottini. “He can read the court and the game very well, so that’s what surprised me the most when I started working with him. He knows a lot about the game for someone at his age.”Bottini coached the Japanese star Kei Nishikori and worked more recently with the Chilean Nicolás Jarry and the Bulgarian Grigor Dimitrov, both of whom sometimes practiced with Shang at IMG Academy.Bottini began coaching Shang in the preseason after being recruited by Li Xi, Shang’s primary agent, a former Chinese player who was on the women’s team at the University of Virginia and was sitting courtside on Monday in a bucket hat next to Shang’s father, Yi.Shang has had no shortage of coaches in his short career, including Marcelo Ríos, the former No. 1 from Chile who worked with Shang for a brief period last year. Though Shang won his first Challenger title in Lexington, Ky., during their collaboration, they soon split.“It was sad it didn’t work out in the end, but he did bring things to my game,” Shang said.Once ranked No. 1 on the ATP Tour, Ríos, like Shang, is a left-hander, but Shang said his biggest source of inspiration has been another left-handed No. 1: Rafael Nadal.Shang first saw him play in person at the men’s ATP event in Beijing, and though Shang said he had not returned to China since he was 14 because of the coronavirus pandemic, he is eager to play there again once the country, which is reopening, allows international tournaments like the Beijing event or the Masters 1000 in Shanghai to resume.“It would be great to play at home in China,” he said.For now, considering the supportive atmosphere on Monday, he will have to settle for playing at home in Australia, but he should face a bigger challenge on Wednesday in Tiafoe, a U.S. Open semifinalist last year who is seeded No. 16 in Melbourne. “Jerry’s obviously having a great tournament, but we need to keep his feet on the ground,” Bottini said. “He has a lot of potential, as we can all see, but we need to go little by little. I think he has a big career ahead of him.” More

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      in Basket

      He Used to Post Up. Now He Throws Down.

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      BALTIMORE — Satnam Singh’s favorite wrestling move is the helicopter. Using biceps bigger than newborns and thighs as thick as fire hydrants, he lifts his opponents above his head, whirls them around and tosses them like rag dolls onto the mat.He described the move as he was preparing for work one night: a taping of “AEW: Dynamite,” the signature television show for All Elite Wrestling, an upstart competitor for World Wrestling Entertainment. That night, the audience at the Chesapeake Employers Insurance Arena would see him effortlessly withstand an elevated swan dive into his chest from Samuel Ratsch, who is better known by his wrestling moniker, Darby Allin.“I feel happy,” Singh said in a deep baritone as he stood near an elevator that would lead him backstage. Then he shook his fist and declared, “I feel angry, like I’m going to kick someone.”That’s a good thing, since it’s his job to get angry and kick people — or at least pretend to. At 7-foot-2, he has an imposing presence. His size is useful in wrestling, but challenging when he is shopping for his size 20 shoes or flying on airplanes. But for much of his life, his height was his key asset as he chased a singular goal: getting to the N.B.A.Before he joined A.E.W. last year, Singh was best known for being the first Indian-born player drafted into the N.B.A., in 2015 by the Dallas Mavericks. (The year before, Sim Bhullar, who grew up in Canada, became the first player of Indian descent to sign with a N.B.A. team. Bhullar appeared in three games during the 2014-15 season with the Sacramento Kings.) But Singh’s drafting was a seminal moment for the league’s fledgling efforts to grow the sport in India. It was also a big moment for Singh, 27, the second of his family’s three children in Ballo Ke, a village in the Indian state of Punjab. Suddenly, Singh had “so much weight on my shoulders,” he said, because he was “the only one in the world” drafted from his country.Residents of Ballo Ke, Singh’s home village, welcomed him and his father, Balbir Bhamara, after Singh was drafted into the N.B.A. in 2015.Shammi Mehra/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesSeven years later, that burden is gone — though not totally by choice. All Singh had wanted out of life was to represent his country in the N.B.A. He wanted to grab rebounds like the 7-foot-1 star Shaquille O’Neal, one of his favorite players. But after Singh struggled to catch on in the N.B.A., his basketball career was derailed by a failed drug test that he said was a mistake. His search for an alternate path led him to a new dream, and a quest to once again represent India on the global stage.“He did very well in basketball, and now he is doing well in wrestling,” said his father, Balbir Bhamara. “By grace of God, he is making his name.”‘Had so many eyes on me’Bhamara introduced Singh to basketball as a young boy after a friend’s recommendation. (Singh goes by his middle name professionally.) Bhamara is a farmer, but like Singh he is around seven feet tall. He saw an opportunity to put his child’s height to good use in a way he hadn’t been able to do himself.“He will do great and make me proud,” Bhamara recalled thinking, in an interview from Ballo Ke through a Punjabi interpreter. In the family’s one-bedroom flat, a poster of Michael Jordan hangs on a bedroom wall. Bhamara said Singh put it there as he was learning how to play.Basketball was nowhere near as popular in India as cricket and soccer when Singh was growing up. When he met an N.B.A. executive in Punjab at the Ludhiana Basketball Academy in 2010, only an estimated 4.5 million people were playing basketball in India, a country of more than a billion. But Singh loved the N.B.A. stars O’Neal and Kobe Bryant and had already become a minor celebrity in his own right. As a young teenager, he was compared to Yao Ming, the influential 7-foot-6 Houston Rockets star from China.“From the Day 1, I realized he was a man like God sent him specially to us,” Teja Singh Dhaliwal, the general secretary of the Punjab Basketball Association, said in a 2016 Netflix documentary about Singh’s life titled “One in a Billion.”Troy Justice, the head of the N.B.A.’s international basketball development, was the executive who met Singh in 2010. As they became close, the N.B.A. was ramping up efforts to expand in India, opening its Mumbai office in 2011 and starting scouting programs and training academies. The league hosted two preseason games in Mumbai in 2019.Singh in 2011 in New Delhi. When he met an N.B.A. executive the year before, only an estimated 4.5 million people were playing basketball in India.Associated Press“My best friend there said, ‘Troy, do basketball and business like we do traffic in India,’” Justice said. “‘We don’t have lines. You just kind of find an open space and keep moving forward until you reach your destination.’”As the N.B.A. made inroads in India, Singh made his way to the United States. When he was 14, he enrolled at IMG Academy, a high school in Bradenton, Fla., known for developing elite basketball talent. Far from home and trying to learn English, Singh had a difficult time adjusting, said Sonny Gill, Singh’s childhood best friend.But Singh’s size made him an intriguing N.B.A. prospect. He declared for the draft in 2015 and worked out for several teams, including the Rockets. Singh was in high school for five years — a result of the language barrier — and was thus eligible for the draft. The Bollywood star Akshay Kumar called him “an inspiration.” But some saw him as a long shot because he was stiff and slow.“He was very easy to rule out just from the workout, which is risky and teams have been burned,” said Daryl Morey, who was the Rockets’ general manager at the time and now works for the 76ers. “But he definitely did not look like he belonged on an N.B.A. floor.”Many members of Singh’s village traveled to the local gurdwara, a Sikh place of worship, to pray for him to be drafted. On the night of the draft, Singh recalled, his feet and hands were shaking. Gill, now Singh’s manager, remembered watching his friend sweat and rub his hands together as each pick was announced at Barclays Center in Brooklyn. The first round went by. So did most of the second.“All of India who knew,” Singh said, “everyone had so many eyes on me.”But at pick No. 52 of 60, Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, decided to take a shot.“In four or five years, if he continues to progress as he has, he could be the face of basketball in India, easily,” Cuban said in the “One in a Billion” documentary about Singh. “I would expect that to happen. He’s got that much upside.”Singh driving to the basket against Golden State during a 2016 N.B.A. Summer League game in Las Vegas.David Dow/NBAE, via Getty ImagesMany players drafted that late never make the N.B.A., but Singh’s stardom at home reached new heights. Amitabh Bachchan, one of the biggest movie stars in India, congratulated him on Twitter, saying, “India goes to NBA .. now time for NBA to come to India ..!!” Bachchan’s, son, Abhishek, also a well-known actor, offered to play Singh in a movie.But Singh’s American basketball career fizzled. He never appeared in an N.B.A. game in the regular season, and rarely played for Dallas’s developmental team over two seasons. The N.B.A. was moving away from slow big men and toward a more athletic style of play. Singh opted to play in Canada and for the Indian men’s national team as he tried to make it back to the N.B.A.“He was heartbroken,” Gill said. “That’s all he talked about every day.”‘You can open so many people’s dreams’In late 2019, while Singh was preparing for the South Asian Games with the Indian national team, he failed a drug test and was provisionally suspended by the National Anti Doping Agency in India. Gill said Singh took an over-the-counter supplement that he did not realize contained a banned substance. A year later, India’s antidoping agency barred Singh from competition for two years, including the year he had been provisionally suspended.Asked about the ban now, Singh was reluctant to discuss it.“End of day, whatever happened happened,” Singh said. “I don’t want those bad things in my life again, but end of day, I just want to tell everyone to be careful.”Later, he brought the incident up on his own. When he received the ban, Singh said, he saw his free time as a newly cracked door. He thought to himself, “You can open so many people’s dreams to come true.”Singh before an All Elite Wrestling event at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County campus in November. He said he was focused on wrestling and hadn’t touched a basketball in a couple of years.Matt Roth for The New York TimesSingh had never been much of a wrestling fan, though he did enjoy Dwayne Johnson’s character, The Rock. Professional wrestling, like the N.B.A., had been trying to cultivate a fan base in India, and Singh — a giant like the popular Indian-born wrestler Dalip Singh Rana, known as The Great Khali — looked like he could help.In 2017, while Singh was with the Mavericks’ developmental team, W.W.E. invited him for a workout. He had fun, but he was still focused on trying to get to the N.B.A. That year, W.W.E. made Yuvraj Singh Dhesi — known as Jinder Mahal — the first W.W.E. champion of Indian descent. By 2021, with Singh’s basketball ambitions dulled, he was ready to give wrestling a try.His mother, Sukhwinder Kaur, was initially fearful.“She saw wrestling matches on television and everyone keeps getting thrown out of the ring,” Singh said. “My mom said, ‘I hope he isn’t hurt.’ I told Mom: ‘Don’t worry. Your son will be amazing.’”When Singh approached A.E.W., Tony Khan, who founded the company in 2019, saw an opportunity.“There are very few wrestlers from India or Pakistan in my life,” said Khan, 40, who is of Pakistani descent and the son of the Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shahid Khan. “Wrestlers of brown-skinned descent are often portrayed as villains or terrorists or some terrible atrocity.”He thought Singh could be different. In September 2021, a month after A.E.W. signed a broadcasting deal with Eurosport India, the company announced that it had signed Singh.Paul Wight, an A.E.W. wrestler best known by his W.W.E. name The Big Show, said Singh was an ideal fit for wrestling. “A basketball player and a tennis player will adapt to wrestling footwork faster than most athletes,” said Wight, who mentors Singh.The A.E.W. producer and manager Retesh Bhalla, known as Sonjay Dutt, left, and Singh performed ringside as “managers” for the longtime professional wrestler Jay Lethal.Matt Roth for The New York TimesMichael Cuellari, known as Q.T. Marshall in the ring, trains Singh at his Atlanta-area wrestling school, the Nightmare Factory. He said much of his job is “teaching him how not to injure somebody while looking like you’re trying to injure somebody.”“Because he’s so big and he’s so strong, obviously he’s going to be very stiff right out of the gate,” Cuellari said.‘Just be himself’Wrestling isn’t just about big muscles and smashing opponents. It is about charisma and connecting with the audience. It is about rip-roaring promos, blasting the opponent and getting audiences to roar, for better or worse.“It’s hard, right?” Cuellari said. “Because he’s got such a deep voice and such a different tone. And on top of that, like, English not being his first language. So we just try to make him feel as comfortable as possible and just be himself.”Singh made his debut in April in a group with the characters Jay Lethal and Sonjay Dutt. In June, Singh pulled off the helicopter move in his first match. He has been used sparingly as he trains: Take the occasional dive bomb; chuck a human like a shot put every now and then; glower at the camera. Off camera, he has a boisterous personality that has endeared him to his new co-workers.Singh, left, horsing around with his fellow A.E.W. wrestler Will “Powerhouse” Hobbs, middle, and Amanda Huber, A.E.W. community outreach, backstage.Matt Roth for The New York TimesThough there have been successful giants, like Andre the Giant, The Undertaker and The Big Show, fans have largely gravitated toward relatively smaller characters, like The Rock, Stone Cold Steve Austin and Rey Mysterio. In many ways, Singh faces the same challenge in wrestling that he did in basketball: Success is increasingly less about brawn than speed and athleticism.“The track record of giants in professional wrestling as quality in-ring technicians is not long,” said Retesh Bhalla, who plays Sonjay Dutt. Bhalla is also an A.E.W. creative executive.But Khan, the A.E.W. founder, is optimistic about Singh. “We’ve seen an increase in traffic when Satnam is involved in segments,” Khan said, adding, “A ton of our YouTube traffic comes from India, and he’s a driver.”Singh said the last time he picked up a basketball was in 2019, when he was suspended. Though his cellphone case has a picture of Bryant, the former Los Angeles Lakers star, Singh said his basketball career is over. He is still willing to mentor players in India, and he has coached at the N.B.A.’s Basketball Without Borders camps there.“He is and was and still will be an inspiration,” said Justice, the N.B.A. executive.Singh seems at peace with his new road — “I am so surprised, but I am so happy,” he said — more concerned with increasing his bench press max from 500 pounds than sharpening his jumpers. He wants to go into acting, the non-wrestling kind. One way or another, he’s once again aiming to be a bridge on behalf of India.Matt Roth for The New York Times More

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      in Tennis

      Nick Bollettieri, Nurturer of Tennis Champions, Dies at 91

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      At his training camps, he employed a tough style in developing 10 players who reached the No. 1 world ranking. “He yells at kids, insults them. And they work harder.”Nick Bollettieri, who never competed in elite tennis but was once the world’s most famous tennis coach, developing 10 players who reached the No. 1 international ranking in singles, died on Sunday at his home in Bradenton, Fla. He was 91. David R. Legge, a journalist who is writing an authorized biography about Bollettieri, confirmed his death. Legge said Bollettieri began having renal problems several months ago and that his health had deteriorated since then.Bollettieri was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, R.I., in 2014 as a “contributor” to the game. He joined only three others honored solely for their coaching, the longtime Australian Davis Cup captain Harry Hopman and two other Americans, Vic Braden and Dr. Robert Johnson, an advocate for African American junior tennis who mentored Althea Gibson and Arthur Ashe.Bollettieri co-founded the Port Washington Tennis Academy on Long Island in 1966, its star pupils including John McEnroe and Vitas Gerulaitis.In the early 1980s, he opened the Bollettieri Academy in Bradenton, Fla., on what were then tomato fields, pioneering the concept of live-in facilities for promising junior tennis players. He sold it in 1987 to the sports agency IMG. Now known as the IMG Academy, it tutors young athletes in many sports and has dozens of tennis courts for the Bollettieri Tennis Program. Bollettieri, who founded that program, became its president.Serena and Venus Williams, Monica Seles, Andre Agassi, Jim Courier, Maria Sharapova, Marcelo Rios and Boris Becker are among the players who trained or boarded at the academy.Nick Bollettieri spoke to young players at what had been his tennis academy in 2013; he had sold it to the IMG sports agency in 1987, but remained president of the Bollettieri Tennis Program. Edward Linsmier for The New York TimesBollettieri was known for a hard-driving style. As Sports Illustrated put it in 1980: “He yells at kids, insults them. And they work harder. He grabs players and orders them off the court. And they work harder. At junior tournaments, when the Bollettieri contingent arrives, the other kids look at them as if the Marines had just landed. They are the products of a tougher sort of training.”Nicholas James Bollettieri was born on July 31, 1931, in Pelham, N.Y., in Westchester County. His father, James, was a pharmacist, and his mother, Mary Rita (DeFillipo) Bollettieri, was a homemaker.He graduated from Spring Hill College in Mobile, Ala., in 1953, and then saw military service in an airborne division. After his discharge in 1957, he attended law school at the University of Miami. To earn money toward his tuition, he taught tennis at area courts, charging $1.50 for a half-hour lesson, though his experience was limited to some play as a teenager. His first students included Brian Gottfried, who went on to an outstanding tennis career.Bollettieri built his Bradenton, Fla. academy on what were tomato fields. He pioneered the concept of live-in tennis camps. Lutz Bongarts/Bongarts, via Getty ImagesBollettieri quit law school after one year and worked during summers at the John D. Rockefeller Estate in Pocantico Hills, a hamlet in the Westchester town of Mount Pleasant, and winters at the Rockefeller-owned Doral Beach hotel in Puerto Rico, becoming its tennis director. He returned to Florida in 1978 and became an instructor at what was then the Colony Beach and Tennis Resort in Longboat Key before opening his academy in Bradenton.The ABC News program “20/20” profiled the academy in its early years, bringing it national attention.In 2014, Bollettieri was giving private lessons at $900 an hour.“Nick is one of the youngest, most passionate guys on the planet,” Jim Courier, who had won four major singles titles, told The New York Times at the time. “No baloney. He’s not doing it for the money. He loves making a difference and getting meaning from it. As corny as that sounds, it’s true. He has family and more wives than anyone should ever have, but Nick is someone who wakes up in the morning and craves going to the office. It’s what keeps him going.”When Bollettieri was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 2014 as a “contributor” to the game, he joined only three others honored solely for their coaching. Carsten Rehder/picture alliance, via Getty ImagesBollettieri’s survivors include his eighth wife, Cindi Eaton; his children from various previous marriages, including his daughters, Danielle Bollettieri, Angelique Bollettieri, Nicole Bollettieri Kroenig and Alexandra Bollettieri; his sons, James, Giovanni and Giacomo; and four grandchildren.Bollettieri was the instruction editor of Tennis Magazine and published the memoirs “My Aces, My Faults” (1996, with Dick Schaap) and “Bollettieri: Changing the Game” (2014). He was the author of the instructional book “Nick Bollettieri’s Tennis Handbook” (2001).In his later years, Bollettieri cut down on his schedule and did his coaching on indoor courts.“Today the whole world is playing tennis, and many years ago there were about six countries,” Bollettieri told The Times in 2014. “Now we are competing against the world, so it’s much more difficult for me when somebody comes up and says, ‘Nick, tell us about another champion.’ I’m very reluctant.”Alex Traub More