To China With Love-15

It is a matter of record that in 1938 a Chinese named Kho Sin Kie reached the fourth round at Wimbledon, losing to one Franz Cejnar of Czechoslovakia. With that exception, China hasn't made a ripple in the world of tennis, which over the years had acquired the reputation of being an elitist sport. There are signs, however, that a modest wave is starting to build.

A Feel for the Game

He had won at Wimbledon and at Forest Hills and now he was winning again, but this place was hardly a shrine of tennis. In fact, it wasn't really a court, just a green carpet spread over what was once a junkyard and was now primarily a basketball arena. Last month, Jimmy Connors was in Guangdong Sheng People's Stadium—capacity 6,000—playing Eliot Teltscher in the finals of the $50,000 Marlboro Canton Grand Prix Tennis Classic before a house packed with local residents who had paid as little as 15� each to sit in cement bleachers under a broiling sun to watch a game many of them didn't understand.

Connors had been coaxed to China—undoubtedly not by the prospect of winning the $8,750 first prize—to lend stature to the first professional tennis tournament held there. Pro tennis in China? And sponsored by a tobacco company? "Three years back, the concept of sports sponsorship would have been unthinkable," says Kong Zingwen, a high-ranking official of the China Sports Service, an organization whose function it is to attract commercial backing from worldwide companies. "After the death of Mao and the purge, it was decided by the new government that competitive sports were indeed very important. Coaches were then brought in from around the world to help our athletes better compete on an international level."

The Sports Service is on the prowl for money that will decrease the financial burden on the government. Enter Philip Morris. Like so many companies trying to woo the Chinese y�an, Philip Morris jumped at the opportunity to put up the $50,000 in prize money, while other companies—for example, Toyota and Goodyear—provided additional revenue.

Also in on the act was Mark McCormack's International Management Group, which a year and a half ago signed an agreement with the All-China Athletic Federation and the China Central Television network to promote sports in that country. The agreement allows McCormack's group to put together worldwide TV rights from various events held in China. The Canton tennis finals were seen live in China with taped coverage being beamed to Australia, Thailand, the Philippines and Hong Kong.

As might be expected, the players found out that Canton was indeed the far side of Wimbledon. First, getting there was no fun at all. Canton is only a 25-minute plane ride from Hong Kong, but tickets proved to be scarce. Some players with confirmed reservations showed up at the airport and discovered that their names were missing from the computer readout. By rail the same trip takes about three hours, but because the tournament coincided with the Canton Trade Fair, no seats were available. So, many players took a hydrofoil from Hong Kong to the Portuguese territory of Macao and then endured a six-hour bus trip. "What they didn't tell us in advance was that we would have to be ferried across four rivers to get to Canton," says Ross Case, an Australian. "It was an interesting look at China along the way, but we were exhausted when we arrived."

Most of the players stayed at the White Cloud Hotel, which, as expected, was no cloud nine.

Food was the major difficulty, except for those who took to grass-snake soup or sweet-and-sour eel. Connors had anticipated the problem and solved it by loading a suitcase with peanut butter and cookies. Terry Moor of the U.S. drank soda but didn't eat any solid food for several days, until he located a Western restaurant near the Trade Fair grounds. Whereupon he downed a meal consisting of eight pieces of bread and two meat entr�es. Teltscher got by on orange juice, sometimes as many as 10 glasses at a time.

The tournament itself was fairly predictable. Connors beat Teltscher in the final, 6-2, 6-4. Outside the People's Stadium was an enormous billboard of Jimmy, advertising the event. Inside was a veritable church bazaar, with small booths at which everything from small grapefruit to guitars was sold. Among the most impressive sights of the week were the linesmen. One never took his eyes off his designated spot for the entire match.