HYEON CHUNG: The Rising Star from Korea

PRIYANSH

In 2014, Hyeon Chung was unsure of his tennis career. Facing a 21-month military service by law in South Korea, Hyeon Chung and his doubles partner Yong-kyu Lim prepared for the Asian Games in Incheon knowing pretty well that their fate would be determined by the doubles tournament. In the semis, the Korean duo played India’s Yuki Bhambri and Divij Sharan.

The Indian pair won the first set 10-8 in the tiebreak. The second set went the distance too, the Korean team just about holding on for an 8-6 score to take the match into a super tiebreak. The contest kept swinging from one side to another but somehow, Chung and Lim grabbed an 11-9 win in the super tiebreak. Their story did not end there. In the final, the Koreans won a tight straight sets match over another Indian duo of Saketh Myneni and Sanam Singh.

The gold medal win meant that both Chung and Lim were exempted from the military service and could go on to pursue their tennis careers. Chung has certainly made the most of this opportunity. As of the week starting April 23, 2018, the 21-yearold from Suwon is ranked 19 in the Association of Tennis Players (ATP) rankings. With Kei Nishikori still recovering from poor form and injuries, Chung is the top ranked Asian male on the circuit.

But the struggle of 2014 is not very far away from his thoughts. Speaking at the Australian Open,

3030 Advantage Tennis Grand Slam Yearbook 2019Advantage Tennis Grand Slam Yearbook 2019 Chung recalled, “We saved like four match points in the semifinals. If I lose that match, maybe I am not here now. I would have to go to the army.” He now belongs to a different kind of battle.

The Australian Open earlier this year represented the most stunning success till now for the Korean. Unseeded, Chung went on to become the first from his country to play a Grand Slam semifinal. He overcame three seeds – Mischa Zverev, the German’s younger and more illustrious brother Alexander Zverev, and Novak Djokovic. But it was not merely his success, but also Chung’s humble manner which attracted crowds in Melbourne.

The Korean’s biggest win was his

straight sets victory over Djokovic in the quarters which earned him plaudits worldwide. One of his admirers was no other than Roger Federer, who played him next in the semifinal. Speaking before their match, the Swiss legend said, “Look, I’m very excited to play Chung. I thought he played an incredible match against Novak. To beat him here is one of the tough things to do in our sport, I believe. I know that Novak maybe wasn’t at 110 percent, but he was all right. He was giving it a fight till the very end. To close it out, that was mighty impressive.”

For Chung, though, beating Novak had special significance on a personal level. He had grown up imitating the Serb, and now he had beaten him in a Grand Slam quarterfinal without dropping a set. Speaking to The New York Times, Hyeon recalled the games he used to play back home in parking lots with his elder brother Hong who is a tennis player as well.

“It was similar like mini-tennis,” Chung said. “My model was Novak, and my brother liked Rafa because he is playing also lefty.” Chung went on to base his game on Djokovic’s style. “When I was young, I just tried to copy Novak because he was my idol,” he added.

Federer noted the similarities as well. “Reminds me obviously a lot of Novak. The way he’s able to slide on forehand and backhand and use the hard court as a clay court and get balls back and stay aggressive in defense.”

With his white frame glasses and innocuous mannerisms, Chung certainly does not seem very aggressive. But he does hit a mean forehand, a facet of his game the South African coach Neville Godwin was keen to improve. Godwin, who had previously won the ATP’s coach of the year award during his stint with Kevin Anderson, started working with Chung towards the end of 2017 and he realised the Korean had a tendency to be defensive at times. He made Chung’s serve his primary concern.

“It’s kind of like an Andy Roddick serve. Obviously Hyeon’s legs are the power base of his game. The more he can bring them into the equation, the better,” Godwin told The New York Times. So, Chung was asked to reduce the gap between his feet so that he could impart more drive into the serve from his legs. It worked wonders.

These gains, however, could not make a difference in the Australian Open semifinal. Federer’s experience showed in the curtailed encounter as Chung had to retire, forced by the painful blisters on his feet. The injury had started troubling him after he won his third-round match against Alexander Zverev and the young Korean required injections to see him through in the following matches. The challenge was considerable.

“These are serious injections. Each one lasts like a minute. The guy is biting into a towel for a minute, and you have to do it pretty close to match time otherwise it wears off. So 45 minutes before a match, and he’s biting into a towel having someone jabbing his feet. He had three doctors, a podiatrist and five trainers running around after him the, sort of, last 10 days,” said his coach, Godwin. Fortunately, though, Chung is back on the circuit and playing well again. At the Indian Wells Masters, Chung met Federer again and stretched him hard in the first set before bowing out in their quarterfinal encounter. In the following marquee tournament, the Miami Open, Chung was defeated only by the eventual champion John Isner at the same stage.

This is the future his parents had envisaged for him, albeit accidentally. Chung’s father Suk-jin played tennis and so does his elder son Hong, but Hyeon got introduced to tennis only after a doctor thought the sport could strengthen his weak eyesight. “The doctor said instead of looking at the tiny letters of the book, it’s better to look at the green color. In Korea, all the fences around the tennis courts were green,” said Chung’s mother, Young-mi, when she spoke to The New York Times. Soon, though, Hyeon started to match his elder brother on the court and not merely look up to him. Twice, the Chungs played each other on the Asian Futures circuit. Both times, Hyeon emerged the winner. Both he and his brother were being trained at the Nick Bollettieri Academy in Florida and the younger Chung began to stand out. The hype around him only rose when he finished runner-up in the 2013 Wimbledon Boys’ Singles tournament.

Two years later, Chung was awarded the ATP’s Most Improved Player prize for jumping from 171 to number 51 in the rankings. His rise was sadly halted by an abdominal injury in 2016, which forced him to spend four months away from competitive tennis. However, an energised Chung returned for the 2017 season which saw him reach multiple landmarks.

For the Korean’s point of view, the year stood out for two reasons. Firstly, a five-set third round clash against Kei Nishikori at the French Open which suggested that Asian tennis may have more to cheer about even though Chung lost. But it was