Sabalenka and Agassi share tennis prowess, career lessons at Prudential NextGen Aces event
The stars joined Olympic champion fencer Vivian Kong and Prudential executives in panel talks before demonstrating their skills on the court
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Andre Agassi and Aryna Sabalenka champion future talent at Prudential NextGen Aces event
The journey to the top of a profession is rarely linear. This sentiment was highlighted at an exclusive event championing the next generation of leaders, which was hosted by Prudential and featured a high-profile line-up of elite athletes sharing their personal stories.
Prudential NextGen Aces was held in mid-October ahead of the Prudential Hong Kong Tennis Open, the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) tournament that the insurer has sponsored for more than a decade. This conversation-driven event, which is part of the company’s wider campaign to inspire and nurture young talent in Hong Kong, underscored how performance, mindset and mentorship can help shape rising stars in the worlds of business and sport.
Prudential CEO Anil Wadhwani said in his opening speech that Prudential’s support of tennis reflects its commitment to create value for its stakeholders comprising customers, shareholders and “importantly, our communities”.
“This event is an attempt to showcase some of the world-class talent and dig deep into their experiences. Hopefully it will provide inspiration to our up-and-coming talent to perform and compete on the world stage and be the best they can and put Hong Kong’s name firmly on the map,” he said, referring to the hopeful future tennis stars in the audience.
More than 200 guests gathered to hear two discussion sessions in which Aryna Sabalenka, the current WTA world No 1 player, Andre Agassi, the former No 1 men’s player in the world, and Vivian Kong, Hong Kong’s Olympic gold medallist in fencing, joined Prudential executives on stage to share how they created environments that helped them achieve success.
Over 400 guests were also treated to a lively on-court session between Sabalenka and WTA top 50 player Anna Kalinskaya. In addition, Agassi gave the audience a demonstration of his signature power moves on the court.
Agassi and Wadhwani sat down together for a fireside chat titled “Passing the Racket: Leadership, Legacy and the Next Generation”. Agassi, who won eight grand slam titles during his 21-year professional tennis career, shared how early success led him to make some poor personal choices. But then came a period of reflection that eventually saw him establish a foundation for education in the poorest neighbourhood of Las Vegas, his hometown in the US.
“It gave me a purpose, and I gave myself permission to quit tennis – but then I had my reason to play tennis,” Agassi said, explaining how the charitable work helped him reconnect to the sport. “All of a sudden, it gave me a platform to make a difference in a child’s life, and I’m grateful, because it gave me a second chance at my career.”
The pair also discussed the parallels between sport and business, as well as the need to know your own strengths and weaknesses. “It’s important to be honest and self-aware of both those things, and in order to do that, it requires a level of humility, a level of vulnerability,” Agassi said. “I always look at my team as filling in the gaps of the things I don’t have.”
A panel discussion titled “How Champions Forge New Ones” featured four-time grand slam winner Sabalenka and Paris Olympics champion Kong alongside Angel Ng, Prudential’s regional CEO for Greater China. The trio shared stories of pivotal moments on their career journeys that enabled them to reach the pinnacle of their respective fields.
Ng recalled how taking career breaks when facing difficulties gave her important opportunities to refocus. “Every time I have taken time out, I come back stronger,” she said. “There are several of those moments for me, and those are the moments that I treasure and remember the most. It is cognisant to remember that you’re also human, and you need to refresh to be able to come back stronger.”
Sabalenka, who won her latest major tournament title at the US Open in September, noted that there is no success without failure, pointing to a time when she struggled with her serve before her first grand slam win. She said success required a resilient mindset paired with a consistently disciplined approach to improve skills.
“Those failures teach us how to go in with discipline, because you need to work on those things that didn’t work well for you previously,” Sabalenka said, adding that overcoming difficulties helped her reach the next level.
Kong agreed with Ng’s point, saying that taking time out from one’s career offers a good opportunity to re-evaluate goals. The fencer was forced to step back from her sport when she suffered two anterior cruciate ligament injuries over a two-year period, but during that time away she realised she still had unfulfilled ambitions.
“The injury made me more certain of how committed and passionate I am about fencing,” Kong said, adding that she wanted to achieve success for both her family and Hong Kong. “Being able to find a bigger motivation to keep going was really important for me.”
Watch the video to see how the Prudential NextGen Aces event unfolded, from the panel talks to the tennis court.