The growing number of foreign tennis coaches instructing young players in Hengqin and across the Greater Bay Area is helping take young Chinese players to the next level.

So says local sports operations and management firm Huafa Sports in the wake of the recent 2018 Greater Bay Juniors Tennis Championships held in Hengqin from 11 and 12 August.

According to Huafa Sports, several coaches of the teams competing in this year’s competition were foreigners, an indication that the training of Chinese tennis players is increasingly adopting important international methods.

Compared with previous generations of Chinese players who were only introduced to foreign coaches after turning professional, today’s Chinese players are being exposed to foreign training mechanisms and methods from childhood, taking their competitiveness to a whole new level.

Ji Ming, head of the 2018 Greater Bay Juniors Tennis Championships, told Hengqin Record that the growing reputation of the event is also seeing more teams from outside the Greater Bay Area express interest in participating in the future.

“Starting next year we will expand the scope of the competition and

improve the competition system to be more reasonable,” he said. “We would like to have more young people get involved and give them more opportunities to exercise.”

A total of 88 athletes and 22 coaches from cities across the Greater Bay Area including Macau, Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuhai and Dongguan fought it out at this year’s event, held at the Hengqin International Tennis Center.

The Championships were divided into four groups with Dongguan winning the title ahead of a team from Shenzhen team and the Hong Kong team.