Post his 6-2, 6-4, 6-7, 7-5 win over Oscar Otte of Germany at the Australian Open last year, 17-year-old Chinese teenager Shang Juncheng also shook hands with the ball kids present in the Kia arena. The teenager became the first Chinese player to win a main draw match in the Australian Open in the Open era. The handshakes with the ball-kids was particularly charming as it brought to mind what transpired with Shang in an ATP tour game a few months ago. Back then, the Chinese teenager had helped an Indian-origin ball-boy Atharva Dang in the Lexington Challenger as Atharva fainted during Shang’s match. During that week, the Chinese teenager had become the youngest Chinese player to win an ATP Tour tournament and Monday’s win seemed to bring a smile on the faces of the ball-kids. “He is going to faint! I turned around to ask for the ball. When the ball-kid gave me the ball, he looked like he was unable to stand. I asked him, ‘How are you?’ and he said, ‘I don’t feel good.’ He staggered over and I felt like he was going to faint right away. I just did everything I could do with my gut feeling,” Shang had told the ATP Tour website then. Shang Shining ✨ Wild card Juncheng Shang downs McDonald in five entertaining sets to move into the second round, 6-3 1-6 3-6 6-4 6-2 👏#AusOpen • #AO2024 pic.twitter.com/DpVURnUiuB — #AusOpen (@AustralianOpen) January 16, 2024 The Chinese player later posed for a picture with Atharva “I remember everything. I remember giving him the ball and then he asked me if I was OK. I then remember him dropping his racquet and helping me over to the side where they gave me ice,” Atharva recalled while talking with the ATP Tour. With his father Shang Yo a professional Chinese footballer and mother Wu Na a multiple world championship medallist table tennis player, a young Shang started playing tennis at the age of six years. “I remember it was in an indoor facility and you could hear a lot of players hitting and the ball sound was really loud. I thought it was really cool you could hit with another player. It’s just more intense with the competition. My parents really loved tennis. They both were athletes, so sports to them were just daily things. They got me into tennis and I really loved it, especially the competition,” Shang had told the ATP Tour website last year. Juncheng Shang 🇨🇳👏 Take a bow! The 17-year-old is the youngest player in the men's singles at #AO2023 and becomes the first male Chinese player to win an #AusOpen main-draw singles match in the Open Era.@wwos • @espn • @Eurosport • @wowowtennis pic.twitter.com/SzwIwU86oY — #AusOpen (@AustralianOpen) January 16, 2023 With his father having played in Spain as a footballer, Shang was soon enrolled at the Academia Sanchez-Casal Najin in China, an academy run in collaboration with former Spanish tennis player Emilio Sanchez. Five years later, the youngster shifted his base to Florida to train under Sanchez. After training under Sanchez for three years, Shang joined the IMG Academy in Florida. “He was always a super nice kid. He always had his way of doing things, it seemed he always had one more gear. He played at a pace, then he played another match at another pace, he always had extra gear to play with. It doesn’t matter how good the player is on the other side. He will not bend, he will always stay straight. He has a super strong core. He does things smoothly and he will absorb any type of power from the opponents in a very, very nice way,” Sanchez told ATP Tour website last year. Last year, Shang made his professional debut at the Miami open and then reached the boys’ singles quarter-finals in the French Open. He also reached the semi-finals in the boy’s singles in Wimbledon and became the second Chinese player to become world number one junior after Yibing Wu’s feat in 2017. He would also reach the US Open junior finals before he won the ATP title in Lexington. Last year, the Chinese prodigy also trained under former world number one Marcelo Rios of Chile for three months in the USA including his title win at Lexington but the teenager parted ways with the Rios. The reason was revealing. “For me and my family, the most important thing is to be a good person, to respect others. It is the most important thing that I want to show on and off the field, and with Marcelo I think that that was not being expressed one hundred percent. It's a shame it didn't work out,” Shang had told Spanish website CLAY last year. According to Rios, it was Shang’s father who took the decision. “I wasn’t given any reason why we ended up. I learned this from my agent, who tells me ‘bad news, you are not going to continue with Jerry (Shang’s western name). I said ‘Ah, perfect’. I think this was his dad’s decision. It wasn’t Jerry’s decision. I wasn’t having a good time with the old man,” Rios had said. Shang is the third Chinese player in the Australian Open main draw along with compatriots Zhang Zhizhen and Wu Yibing. 26-year-old Zhang had become the first Chinese player to break into the top 100 rankings in singles last year while 23-year-old Wu had become the first Chinese male to win a singles main-draw match in a Grand Slam with a first round win in 2021 US Open. In Australia, Shang scored wins over the likes of former world number 7 Fernando Verdasco in the qualifying rounds to qualify for the main draw. “I have given my 100 percent and I think I’ve done very well controlling my emotions after each round.Those two guys, (Zhang and Wu) they are definitely my inspiration. They’ve been on tour longer than me and are way more experienced than me. I hope I can get to watch them in the main draw.” Shang had told the Australian Open website. For a teenager, who is a fan of the Harry Potter series, coach Sanchez believes that he will have the pressure globally but not from China. "He doesn’t have pressure from China. He’ll have pressure globally whenever he arrives, but not because he’s going to be the best Chinese player,” Sanchez had told ATP Tour last year. “He wants to really be on top and he has that capacity to be on top.”
