Zheng, who now lives in Barcelona, is forthcoming with reporters about her own journey but avoids talking about China.

目前定居巴塞羅那的鄭欽文，對(duì)記者們直言不諱地講述自己的職業(yè)歷程，卻回避談?wù)撝袊?guó)網(wǎng)球。

Qinwen Zheng was eleven years old in 2014, when China’s Li Na won the women’s singles championship at the Australian Open. Zheng has talked often about Li, who was something of a one-woman tennis wave in her home country. Not until tennis was reintroduced as an Olympic sport, in Seoul, in 1988, had there been much tennis at all in China. (Li’s first racquet sport was badminton.) But, like so many other Western things, it began to catch on there in the nineties, and its popularity grew in the new century. A Chinese team won the women’s gold medal in doubles at the 2004 Olympics, in Athens. Li’s rise brought tennis’s prominence to a whole other level. In 2011, she won the French Open, becoming the first Asian-born player, female or male, to win a Grand Slam. Three years later, tens of millions of television viewers in China watched her best Dominika Cibulková in that Australian Open final. Zheng was among them. “In that moment, I was still a child, and then she gave me a dream that, oh, the Asian player, the Chinese player, also can win a Grand Slam,” she recalled last year. By then, Zheng was in Wuhan, about two hundred and fifty miles from home, at a tennis academy, where she’d gone, in 2010, at her father’s urging, and where she lived for four years.

2014年，當(dāng)中國(guó)選手李娜在澳大利亞網(wǎng)球公開賽上贏得女單冠軍時(shí)，鄭欽文11歲。鄭經(jīng)常談起李娜，李娜在她的祖國(guó)曾掀起一波“一個(gè)女人的網(wǎng)球浪潮”（譯者注：李娜放棄編制進(jìn)入職業(yè)網(wǎng)球）。直到1988年首爾奧運(yùn)會(huì)上，網(wǎng)球重新被列為奧運(yùn)會(huì)比賽項(xiàng)目，中國(guó)才開始有了的網(wǎng)球運(yùn)動(dòng)。(李娜最初拿起球拍是打羽毛球)。但是，像許多其他西方舶來品一樣，網(wǎng)球在90年代開始流行起來，并在新世紀(jì)變得越來越受歡迎。中國(guó)隊(duì)在2004年雅典奧運(yùn)會(huì)上獲得了女子雙打金牌。李娜的崛起將網(wǎng)球的重要性提升到了一個(gè)全新的高度。2011年，她贏得了法國(guó)網(wǎng)球公開賽(French Open)，成為第一個(gè)在亞洲地區(qū)出生贏得大滿貫(Grand Slam)的球員（無論男女）。三年后，數(shù)千萬中國(guó)電視觀眾目睹了她在澳網(wǎng)決賽中擊敗多米尼卡·齊布爾科娃的生涯最佳表現(xiàn)。鄭欽文就是其中之一。“那時(shí)，我還是個(gè)孩子，然后她給了我一個(gè)夢(mèng)想，哦，亞洲球員，中國(guó)球員，也可以贏得大滿貫，”她去年回憶道。那時(shí)，鄭欽文在一所離家250英里（約400公里）的武漢的網(wǎng)球?qū)W院上學(xué)。2010年，在父親的督促下，她去了那里，并在那里生活了四年。

As this year’s Australian Open gets under way this week, Zheng is widely considered to be among the most promising of the youngest players in the women’s game. (The only younger player ranked above her is Coco Gauff.) She is tall, at five feet ten; her topspin-lathered forehand is penetrating. She’s rangy and aggressive, and, when her first serve is on, it’s formidable—in her first-round match against Latvia’s Jelena Ostapenko at last summer’s U.S. Open, she struck twenty-one aces. She trains tirelessly and brims with confidence. She has, in sum, the makings of Li’s successor. Many people, not only in China but in the business of professional tennis, have been hoping and planning for a player like her ever since Li hoisted her major trophies a tennis generation ago. (Li, dogged by knee injuries, retired not long after her victory in Australia.) China was supposed to be where tennis would grow in the twenty-first century—where new events on the tour would be held, with Chinese companies sponsoring them lavishly; where racquets and sneakers would be sold in such numbers that the country would rival the U.S. as a market for tennis gear; where girls, especially, would take to tennis, with the best becoming stars of the game. (Boys were already crazy for basketball; there is just one Chinese player currently in the A.T.P. Top 100, Zhizhen Zhang, who is ranked No. 96.)

隨著今年的澳大利亞網(wǎng)球公開賽拉開帷幕，鄭欽文被廣泛認(rèn)為是女子網(wǎng)球中最有前途的年輕球員之一。(唯一高于她排名的年輕選手是可可·高夫(Coco Gauff))。她個(gè)子很高，有五英尺十英寸(178厘米);她的正手強(qiáng)力上旋球極具穿透力。她身材修長(zhǎng)球風(fēng)有侵略性。當(dāng)她在站上賽場(chǎng)完成第一個(gè)發(fā)球開始，就會(huì)變得很可怕——在去年夏天的美網(wǎng)首輪對(duì)陣?yán)摼S亞選手耶琳娜·奧斯塔彭科(Jelena Ostapenko)時(shí)，她發(fā)出了21個(gè)Ace球（譯者注：發(fā)球直接得分）。她不知疲倦地訓(xùn)練且充滿信心?？傊?，她具備了李娜接班人的一切潛質(zhì)。從李娜這一代運(yùn)動(dòng)員開始獲得公開賽冠軍以來，許多人，不僅是中國(guó)國(guó)內(nèi)的人，還有職業(yè)網(wǎng)球圈的人，都一直希望并規(guī)劃能像鄭欽文這樣的選手出現(xiàn)。(李娜因膝蓋受傷，在澳網(wǎng)奪冠后不久就退役)。中國(guó)被認(rèn)為是21世紀(jì)網(wǎng)球發(fā)展的沃土新的巡回賽事在中國(guó)舉辦，中國(guó)公司的贊助趨之若鶩；在中國(guó)，球拍和運(yùn)動(dòng)鞋的銷量將達(dá)到足以與美國(guó)匹敵的網(wǎng)球裝備市場(chǎng)；在中國(guó)，女孩子尤其喜歡網(wǎng)球，最優(yōu)秀的會(huì)成為運(yùn)動(dòng)明星。(男孩們已經(jīng)為籃球瘋狂了；目前只有一名中國(guó)男選手進(jìn)入了ATP前100名，那就是排名第96位的張之臻)。

New élite tennis academies run by Western coaches opened in Chinese cities; sports-management agencies went to China in search of talent. (By the time she was a teen-ager, Zheng was being managed by IMG, which also represented Novak Djokovic and Serena Williams.) The Australian Open began branding itself as the Asia Slam, and worked to lure Chinese sponsors, tourists, and TV-rights deals. By 2019, tennis was estimated to be a four-billion-dollar business in China, second only to that in the United States, and growing at a faster rate. Zheng by then had moved from Wuhan to Beijing, where she was tutored by the Argentinean coach Carlos Rodríguez, who had worked with the Belgian star Justine Henin and, near the end of her career, Li Na. Ten W.T.A. tournaments were held in China in 2019, two more than in the United States. (There were men’s tournaments, too, in China, but fewer.) The W.T.A. Finals were held, for the first time, in Shenzhen, which had outbid a number of other cities worldwide and secured a ten-year deal to host the tournament. The tournament’s total prize money that year was fourteen million dollars, five million more than that of the A.T.P. men’s finals, held in London; the singles winner, Ashleigh Barty, earned $4.42 million, the most that any player had ever won at that point at a tennis tournament. It looked for all the world that China was undergoing the sort of boom that tennis hadn’t seen since the American fever for the game in the sixties and seventies.

在幾個(gè)中國(guó)城市，西方教練開辦多個(gè)精英網(wǎng)球?qū)W院；體育管理公司到中國(guó)尋找人才。(十幾歲時(shí)，鄭欽文的經(jīng)紀(jì)公司是IMG，諾瓦克·德約科維奇(Novak Djokovic)和塞雷娜·威廉姆斯(Serena Williams)都曾是這家公司代理的球員)。澳網(wǎng)開始標(biāo)榜自己為亞洲的大滿貫賽事，并努力吸引中國(guó)贊助商、游客和電視轉(zhuǎn)播權(quán)。到2019年，網(wǎng)球在中國(guó)的市值估計(jì)達(dá)到40億美元，僅次于美國(guó)，而且增長(zhǎng)速度更快。當(dāng)時(shí)鄭欽文已經(jīng)從武漢搬到了北京，在那里接受阿根廷教練卡洛斯羅德里格斯(Carlos Rodríguez)的指導(dǎo)，卡洛斯曾與比利時(shí)網(wǎng)球明星賈斯汀·海寧(Justine Henin)（譯者注：前女網(wǎng)世界第一）以及職業(yè)生涯接近尾聲時(shí)的李娜合作過。2019年，中國(guó)舉辦了10場(chǎng)WTA（譯者注：國(guó)際女子網(wǎng)球協(xié)會(huì)）錦標(biāo)賽，比美國(guó)還多兩場(chǎng)。(中國(guó)也有男子錦標(biāo)賽，但數(shù)量較少)。WTA總決賽第一次在深圳舉行，深圳在競(jìng)標(biāo)中擊敗了世界上許多其他城市，獲得了為期10年的賽事主辦權(quán)。那年的錦標(biāo)賽總獎(jiǎng)金為1400萬美元，比在倫敦舉行的A.T.P.男子總決賽的獎(jiǎng)金多500萬美元；單打冠軍阿什麗·巴蒂(Ashleigh Barty)獲得了442萬美元的獎(jiǎng)金，這是當(dāng)時(shí)網(wǎng)球錦標(biāo)賽中獲得獎(jiǎng)金最多的選手。在全世界看來，中國(guó)正在經(jīng)歷一場(chǎng)自上世紀(jì)六七十年代美國(guó)網(wǎng)球熱以來從未出現(xiàn)過的熱潮。

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