38 years ago, he started playing with a vanguard tennis racket for 7 yuan

Tennis brings the alumni together

"In 1983, Shanghai launched the Pioneer brand tennis racket. We took the racket and waved it for 7 yuan each. With this swing, the handsome boys and beautiful girls from the school gathered around and watched, raising our interest in tennis. ......" Wu Daozheng recalled his first contact with tennis, "At that time our school was still called East China Textile Engineering College. When we first played a school tennis match, there was no professional venue. Borrow the volleyball net to create the simplest court."

In the nearly 40 years since he became acquainted with tennis, Wu Daozheng was also busy with his career, so that the idle tennis rackets at home accumulated dust. Until once he returned to the campus of Donghua University and met a group of alumni who played tennis, and his tennis addiction was suspended again. "Our Tennis Alumni Association now has more than 70 people. It is the first time to hold a game, and the farthest one came from Tianjin."

Like Wu Daozheng, many tennis enthusiasts began to play tennis in college, but often after work, because they don't have the previous ball partner, they gradually move away from tennis. Currently, the emerging tennis alumni associations of various colleges and universities are expected to become an organization that gathers sand into a tower. In this year's Urban Development Open, alumni and business school club groups were set up for the first time. The 12 alumni club teams from Shanghai Jiaotong University, East China University of Science and Technology, East China Normal University, Donghua University, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Fudan University EMBA, China Europe International Business School and other universities have become a highlight.

The reason why the alumni clubs of major universities are gradually established, I have to mention the University Alumni Tennis Association (CUATA). According to the president of the CUATA Federation, since its establishment in 2017, CUATA has gradually expanded its influence by holding tours throughout the country. Not only has it attracted more college alumni to join, but it has also promoted the school's attention to alumni, allowing more connections between alumni, and between alumni and the school.

Li Yao, vice president of the Shanghai Tennis Association and planner of "Shanghai Tennis 123", said, "In the first 20 years, we were looking for people to organize people; in the next 20 years, we will build a platform for these spontaneous tennis teams to communicate. I am very pleased. At this year’s City Open, we saw many new faces. Social tennis has entered the Pentium 3.0 era and ushered in the best era."

Clubs are the core foundation for the development of the tennis market. Without the form of a club, tennis enthusiasts are like a loose sand. There are at least 100 tennis clubs currently active in Shanghai. The club is the home of tennis lovers. The goal of "Shanghai Tennis 123" is to make this home more sticky. The core of social tennis is not to win or lose, but to achieve a better self.

As a brand-featured event, the Shanghai Citizen Tennis Festival has been held for three consecutive times. This year, the Citizens Tennis Festival with the theme of "Shine on court!" takes "internationalization, professionalization, and digitization" as the core concept, and spreads tennis to the citizens through four forms of "matching, learning, discussion, and watching" Culture, popularize and promote tennis. This year's Citizen Tennis Festival will focus on strengthening the communication between social clubs and venue linkage services on the basis of the three-tier league of urban clubs, building an interconnected communication platform for the majority of tennis enthusiasts, and continuously expanding the tennis population.