By Randy Walker
@TennisPublisher
When Chinese women graced the top 100 of the WTA tour, many wondered where Chinese men ranked in the ATP rankings. This question is now slowly being answered as more and more male players in China have made progress in men’s tennis.
The last one to attract attention is Yunchaokete Bu.
Bu will become the fourth man from China to compete in the men’s singles at the 2024 US Open after a dramatic win in the tournament’s qualifying rounds. In the final qualifying round, Bu trailed by a break in the final set against former Australian Open semifinalist Aslan Karatsev of Russia, 1-6, 6-3, 6-4, but still managed to reach the main draw of the Grand Slam for the first time in his career.
The 123rd seed Bu will also join fellow countryman Jerry Shang, who is also making his US Open main draw debut but has qualified directly for the 128-player men’s singles field. Zhizhen Zhang of China, who made his US Open debut in 2022, is also in the 2024 US Open field.
At the 2022 US Open, Wu Yibing became the first player from China to win a singles main draw match at a Grand Slam tournament in the Open era when he defeated No. 31 seed Georgian Nikoloz Basilashvili 6-3, 6-4, 6-0 in the first round of the US Open. Wu, who did not compete in the US Open this year, was ranked No. 174 in the world at this point in 2022 and made it into the main draw by winning three qualifying matches. He also became the first Chinese player to win a match at the US Championships since Cheng Guy in 1935.
Read more about the breakthrough and history of Chinese men in 2022 here
Bu has quite an interesting background, having been born and raised in humble circumstances in the Mongolian autonomous prefecture of Bortala in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, deep in western China, which borders Kazakhstan and was historically a Muslim area of China. Bu defeated current top star Holger Rune of Denmark in the second round of the 2019 Australian Open junior championships before a shoulder injury and COVID brought his career to a halt.
Bu said his fellow Chinese pros Wu and Zheng had given him a lot of encouragement and helped him develop the confidence to make it to the highest level of professional tennis.
“They give me a lot of confidence because I didn’t think I could make it to the top 50 or anything, but now they’re close so I think I can do it too,” he said. “We have a good relationship, we write to each other a lot.”
Zhang became the first Chinese player to break into the men’s top 100 and the first player from China to reach the men’s third round at Roland Garros. In Madrid, he also reached the quarterfinals of an ATP Masters tournament for the first time.
