Hong Kong tennis chief determined to make city a must-visit for world's top stars once again
HKTA chief executive is hoping to inject new life into the sport which once attracted the world's top professionals to the city playing to packed crowds at Victoria Park
It's a quiet midweek evening at Victoria Park with the action mostly taking place on the outside courts as willing youngsters chase down balls flying in all directions.
Walk inside the main stadium and you'll find centre court standing almost deserted, save for a few dedicated parents supporting some of the city's rising stars as they wait to take turns in a promotional session being shot with Yan Zi, the now Hong Kong-based Chinese former player and history maker as a two-time grand slam doubles title winner.
It's all part of the build-up to the US$250,000 Prudential Hong Kong Tennis Open from October 10 to 18.
One day we hope to develop a champion or at least someone who can find a job as a tennis coach and give something back to the game that way
When Chris Lai takes up a seat, he looks down on Yan, now an assistant tournament director, as she begins a hit-out with local player Amy Ki Yan-tung, and his talk soon turns to the past.
READ MORE: How former Chinese star Yan Zi is helping to organise Hong Kong Open
The only distraction is the thwack on a racquet and the bouncing of balls and there's history in those sounds, too, that echoes back to a time in the 1980s and '90s when Hong Kong regularly hosted some of the greats of the game and the stadium was on most nights packed to the rafters.
"There's been a bit of an anti-climax since the days when we hosted [Pete] Sampras and [Jim] Courier and [Andre] Agassi," says Lai, chief executive of the Hong Kong Tennis Association.
"Those events were very well attended and we saw some great tennis. It's going to take us a while to build this tournament back up, but we'll get there. Sometimes the hardest thing is to just start."
Therein lies one of the missions Lai set himself when he took up his post last May.
