Following in the recent footsteps of one of his most memorable rivals, former American Top 10 player Michael Chang is getting into coaching. Chang will join Japan's Kei Nishikori as an advisory coach, traveling with the No. 17 player for 17-20 weeks in the 2014 season.
Nishikori spent the last two weeks training with Chang in California, where Chang and wife Amber Liu reside. Chang is the second high-profile player of a generation ago to be enlisted by a burgeoning star in the last two years. About this time in 2011, Ivan Lendl announced he would be coming on as Andy Murray's head coach. Lendl and Chang are forever tied by the latter's staggering upset of the former in the fourth round of the 1989 French Open.
Nishikori, who will turn 24 on Dec. 29, has won three career titles. He reached No. 11 in the world last June and his best Grand Slam performance to date was reaching the Australian Open quarterfinals in 2012.
It should be noted that Chang, born in New Jersey and the son of Taiwanese immigrants, is not of the same nationality as Nishikori, but their Asian ethnicity does bind them together in finding ways to cope with a pressure largely unseen by Western eyes.
Asian athletes who excel in international sports are revered by their home populations, but also subject to immense scrutiny and pressure by the same.
Chang's fateful win over Lendl in 1989 came one day after the Tiananmen Square Massacre in China, and many in China, as well as Chang himself, used his achievement as a rallying point to begin the internal healing process.
In 2011, 116 million Chinese citizens watched Li Na win the French Open. When Yao Ming played for the Houston Rockets in the NBA from 2002-2011, Rockets games were broadcast in China and attracted millions of viewers, even though they usually were played in the early hours of the morning. Yao was routinely voted to start the NBA All-Star Game because millions of Chinese voted online for him, and his jersey was the No. 1 seller in the league, with most of the sales international.