Shanghai
Chang takes journey down reminiscence lane in Shanghai
American visits exhibition at Rolex Shanghai Masters with match director Michael Luevano
October 05, 2025
Rolex Shanghai Masters
Event director Michael Luevano and Michael Chang talk about the historical past of ATP Tour tennis in Shanghai.
By Greg Sharko
Former No. 2 within the PIF ATP Rankings Michael Chang has seen the expansion {of professional} tennis in Shanghai going again greater than 25 years.
The Worldwide Tennis Corridor of Fame member gained his second-to-last tour-level title in Shanghai on 11 October, 1998, when he defeated Goran Ivanisevic in three units. It was additionally the final of Chang’s 12 ATP Tour titles in Asia. Total he gained 34 tour-level titles, together with a streak of at the least one for 11 consecutive years.
The primary ATP Tour match in Shanghai was held in 1996 and two years later, the Shanghai Ba-shi possession group purchased the occasion. Present match director Michael Luevano and managing director Charles Humphrey Smith have been instrumental within the management and the expansion of tennis in Shanghai from the start.
On the 2025 Rolex Shanghai Masters, Luevano took Chang on a tour of the on-site ‘Heritage & Flag’ exhibition of Shanghai tennis, positioned outdoors Grandstand 2. The exhibition chronicles tennis in Shanghai, which began from scratch. Males’s tennis has grown from an ATP 250 match to the year-end Nitto ATP Finals in 2002 and 2005-2008 to a present spot since 2009 on the ATP Tour calendar as one of many 9 ATP Masters 1000 tournaments. That is the third 12 months that the occasion is a 12-day, 96-player subject, making it the largest males’s match in Asia.
“For me, it is all the time particular to come back again to China,” stated Chang, who’s again in Shanghai in his teaching position with rising American teenager Learner Tien. “However for me I feel coming, clearly to Beijing, however right here in Shanghai, to know that you just have been sort of right here when it began.”
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Photograph Credit score: Rolex Shanghai Masters
Luevano, who’s celebrating his thirtieth 12 months as a match director, displays on the affect Chang made within the progress of tennis in Shanghai. “As a result of we needed to construct, as Michael stated, you needed to begin from scratch,” stated Luevano. “Michael was already an enormous star, and two and three on the earth at the moment. That is how we constructed partnerships, that is how we began to construct and educate the Chinese language followers and gamers, encourage gamers.”
Luevano added, “He’s liable for an entire era of Chinese language kids enjoying tennis, not this specific era, though you are a task mannequin, however the era earlier than. After I see Mike, I am emotional, as a result of it is a part of my historical past too.”
The themed exhibition chronicles the beginning of Shanghai tennis which begins with Chang’s title. The Shanghai ATP 250 ran for six editions from 1998-2004, skipping in 2002 when the Tennis Masters Cup was staged on the Shanghai Worldwide Expo Heart. With the success of the primary year-end Nitto ATP Finals (then Tennis Masters Cup) in China, then-ATP CEO Mark Miles stated in the course of the awards ceremony that there was a future for the season finale to be staged once more in Shanghai.
“The fuse was lit when Mark Miles, within the award ceremony of the 2002 Tennis Masters Cup that was in Pudong, in a really giant exhibition corridor, was so impressed and through his award speech stated that definitely he can see sooner or later Shanghai having a Masters 1000 occasion, in addition to staging the Tennis Masters Cup once more,” stated Luevano. “I feel that one assertion turned the catalyst for the funding that you just see, and the federal government help and imaginative and prescient, which definitely the Chinese language are recognized for, to create the tennis tradition, the tennis {hardware} that we get pleasure from now.
“For instance Qizhong Stadium is definitely an architectural surprise, for one, at the least again in 2005 it was. It nonetheless stays a one-of-a-kind showpiece for the town.”
The exhibition options pictures of Chang, Andre Agassi with former Chinese language basketball star Yao Ming, together with previous Tennis Masters Cup champions akin to Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic, who additionally owns a report 4 Rolex Shanghai Masters titles. There are additionally movies and memorabilia of previous champions through the years.
Photograph Credit score: ATP Tour
Final 12 months the match was recognised as Requirements of Excellence – the highest-scoring ATP Masters 1000 match below ATP’s new Participant Selection Awards system – the place gamers consider tournaments with 25+ requirements.
“I had some conversations with totally different gamers about what it was prefer to play right here within the very starting,” stated Chang. “I came to visit on the flight (from Beijing), clearly with Learner, but in addition with Jannik Sinner. And he was like, ‘What was it like enjoying the primary occasions right here’? So I am telling him what it was like, and the way far it is come, and the way spoiled they’re now.
“It is true. I imply, it is unimaginable. I do not know, truthfully, if individuals really realise what is offered for the gamers now. I imply, should you go and also you simply check out the health club and the best way these guys are making ready it for the gamers, the meals and the drink, all the things is first-class.
