Ten Asian-born tennis players who shaped the sport, from Kimiko Date to Kei Nishikori

The half-full show court at the Ariake Coliseum in Tokyo quickly filled on Thursday afternoon. The announcer called it over the speakers: Our greatest player, Kei Nishikori. Kei walked out to a wall of noise, waved, and lost 6-4, 6-4 to the second-seeded Frances Tiafoe. He is thirty-six, ranked World No. 436, a wild card entrant in the tournament he has twice won. On social media he had already said what he came to say. To be honest, I still wish I could continue my playing career. Even so, looking back on everything up to this point, I can proudly say that I gave it my all. I am truly happy to have walked this path.

The path he is talking about is not just his. He was first man from Japan to break the ATP top ten, first Asian man to reach a Grand Slam singles final, first talking head on Japanese breakfast television to carry the sport in his own country alone but the actual story is deeper than one player and more diverse than one country.

Japan

Kei Nishikori

Nishikori arrived in Tokyo on Thursday as the World No. 436 and the stands were still full long after the last point. The announcement called him Japan’s greatest player, which, arguably, he is not. You could say that title belongs to the Japanese born Naomi Osaka. But he was first through the door. First Japanese man ever inside the ATP top ten, which he cracked in May 2014. First player from Asia to reach a Grand Slam singles final, when he beat Novak Djokovic in the semi-finals at Flushing Meadows later that same year before losing the final to Marin Cilic. For a decade he was the only one in the building.

Nishikori never had the modern power game. He survived in the top ten because of deft hands, near-perfect balance and a backhand that opponents remembered after the match. Years of injuries and a 2024 return to the Challenger tour wore the affable man down, and that likable personality he started with on the tour, he ended with. He was always very chill and relaxed in his practice, the Canadian Denis Shapovalov said last month, remembering sessions at IMG Academy in Florida when he was a teenager and Nishikori was already a star. Asking me if there was anything I wanted to do in practice. I was like, no, no, whatever you want. It was nice to have a guy like that on tour.

Naomi Osaka

Osaka was born in the city of the same name in October 1997 and, by the time she turned twenty-four, was the most dominant hard-court player in the women’s game. Four Grand Slam singles titles, four Grand Slam finals, undefeated across the lot of them: Serena Williams at the 2018 US Open, Petra Kvitova at the 2019 Australian Open, Victoria Azarenka at the 2020 US Open, Jennifer Brady at the 2021 Australian Open. Twenty-five weeks at World No. 1 beginning in January 2019, which made her the first Asian player ever to hold the top ranking in either tour. Her name mounted the Olympic cauldron in Tokyo in July 2021 and the women's version of the sport, for a short, gilded window, was built around her.

In the first week of Roland Garros 2021 she skipped a mandatory press conference after her opening-match win. The four Grand Slams issued a joint statement, fined her $15,000 and warned her she faced default. She withdrew from the tournament and posted an explanation on her own channels that the sport is now catching up with, thankfully. The truth is that I have suffered long bouts of depression since the US Open in 2018 and I have had a really hard time coping with that. Her daughter Shai was born in July 2023, she came back to the tour in January 2024, and in 2025 she made the US Open semi-finals, her first Slam semi since the 2021 Australian Open title. 2026 was her best season since the comeback: a Wimbledon quarter-final, her deepest Slam run as a mother, followed a month later by a Montreal final, and she closed the year back inside the WTA top fifteen. On a good day the ball still comes off her racquet with a weight nobody else on the women’s tour can quite match.

Kimiko Date

Date is where it starts for Japanese women's tennis. In Kyoto, in 1970, Kimiko Date left the game aged twenty-five after Atlanta 1996 as a World No. 4 who had made a Grand Slam semi-final on each of the three main surfaces: Australian Open 1994, Roland Garros 1995, Wimbledon 1996. For almost twelve years she stayed retired. Then, in April 2008, aged thirty-seven, she came back. At the Toray Pan Pacific that year she beat the then World No. 12 Dinara Safina. In 2009, aged thirty-eight, she won the Korea Open, her eighth WTA singles title, becoming the second-oldest player in the Open era to win one, after Billie Jean King. She played on, succeeding at doubles into her forties, with her second, and final, retirement in September 2017.

She was asked, in the thick of the comeback, why. Maybe some people think it’s too crazy, she told Tennis.com, but I’m enjoying a lot. For me it’s not only for the ranking or always to win the tournament. It’s just to enjoy life. Japanese tennis built an entire first generation on that sentence. The International Tennis Hall of Fame has not inducted her, yet. The absence looks increasingly odd.

China

Li Na

Li Na, was born in Wuhan in 1982, and won Roland Garros in June 2011. She beat the defending champion Francesca Schiavone 6-4, 7-6 in the final and became the first Asian player, man or woman, to win a Grand Slam singles title. In January 2014 she won the Australian Open, beating Dominika Cibulkova 7-6, 6-0 on Rod Laver Arena, finishing out the second set at a canter. By then she was World No. 2 and five years later Li Na was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame, alongside Mary Pierce and Yevgeny Kafelnikov, the first Asian-born player ever to be inducted.

What many people remember is one of her speeches. At the Melbourne trophy ceremony in 2014 she turned to her husband Jiang Shan and delivered, in her second language, four of the best off-the-cuff minutes in modern tennis. My husband, she said. You are famous in China. So thanks for him giving up everything, just traveling with me to be my hitting partner, fix the drink and fix the racket. He do a lot of job. So, thanks a lot. You are a nice guy. And also you’re so lucky find me. The echoes of laughter from the Australian Open crowd could be heard floating over the Yarra River and into the city of Melbourne.

Qinwen Zheng

Zheng was born in Shiyan in October 2002 and, on 3 August 2024, in Paris, became the first Asian singles player ever to win Olympic gold in tennis. The final was played on the clay of Roland Garros, against Donna Vekic. Zheng won it 6-2, 6-3. En route she beat Iga Świątek in the semi-final, which was already not a result the betting market had on its sheet, and then ended Angelique Kerber’s career in the quarter-final. Earlier in that same calendar year she had reached the Australian Open final, losing to Aryna Sabalenka 3-6, 2-6.

Right-elbow surgery in July 2025 took most of 2026 away from her. By late August she was ranked World No. 121 and in the US Open draw as a qualifier. In the third round, down 5-0 in the final set to Madison Keys, she won seven games in a row. In the fourth round, down 5-0 in the first set to Iga Świątek, she won seven games in a row again. I even forgot the score in the first set at 4-5, she said on court afterwards. That shows how I’m focused. She lost in the quarter-finals to Elena Rybakina in three sets. We expect that this year's US Open results will build Zheng's confidence and she'll work her way to a top 20 spot again early in 2027 (she's currently at 54).

Zheng Jie

Zheng Jie, from Chengdu, was born in 1983, and reached a career-high singles ranking of World No. 15 in May 2009, twice reaching a Grand Slam singles semi-final. The first came at Wimbledon in the summer of 2008. She entered as a wild card ranked No. 133 after an ankle injury, beat the top-seeded French Open champion Ana Ivanovic 6-1, 6-4 in the third round, and became the first Chinese player of either sex ever to reach a Grand Slam singles semi. More than a hundred million people watched the match in China. Ana is the world number one player, she told CNN later. I won over her and that gave me a so much confidence.

She did it again in Melbourne the following January, where Justine Henin, back from retirement in her first tournament, won eleven straight games to close her out in the semi-final 6-1, 6-0. Her greater distinction is in doubles. She and Yan Zi won the 2006 Australian Open women’s doubles together, beating the top-seeded Lisa Raymond and Samantha Stosur, and then Wimbledon that July. Those were the first Grand Slam titles ever won by Chinese players. All of this before Li Na’s 2011 Roland Garros. The door Li Na walked through, Zheng Jie had already opened.

India

Leander Paes

Leander Paes was born in Calcutta in 1973 and became the first Indian player ever inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in July 2024. The ceremony in Newport, when they read out the career for the induction speech, slightly refused to make sense. Eighteen Grand Slam titles. Eight in men’s doubles, ten in mixed doubles, the latter tied with Martina Navratilova for the most in history. Forty-five career Davis Cup doubles wins, which is the single most anybody has ever recorded.

The medal that mattered most to a country came earlier. On 3 August 1996 in Atlanta, Paes beat the Brazilian Fernando Meligeni 3-6, 6-2, 6-4 to take the Olympic singles bronze. It was India’s first individual Olympic medal of any kind in forty-four years. This acknowledgment is indeed the ultimate accolade for every tennis player, Paes said when his Hall of Fame election was announced in December 2023. Induction into the International Tennis Hall of Fame belongs not just to me, but to our billion-plus Indians.

Sania Mirza

Mirza, born in Mumbai in November 1986 and raised in Hyderabad, was the first and remains the most dominant Indian woman tennis has produced. A career-high singles ranking of World No. 27 in 2007 was itself a national first. In doubles she reached World No. 1 in April 2015, held the position for ninety-one weeks, and finished the year as world’s top-ranked doubles player in both 2015 and 2016. The partnership with Martina Hingis, which the circuit nicknamed Santina, won Wimbledon in July 2015, the US Open that September and the Australian Open five months later. Three Slams in three events in a row.

She added three mixed-doubles Slams, two with Mahesh Bhupathi, one with Bruno Soares. Six Grand Slam titles in all, forty-three career WTA doubles titles. Her last professional match came at Dubai in February 2023, a first-round women’s doubles loss alongside Madison Keys, after which she walked out of the arena she had first played as a nineteen-year-old wild card. I feel a lot of gratitude today, she told reporters afterwards. I’ll still be around tennis. It’s just not competing.

Mahesh Bhupathi

Bhupathi, born in Chennai in June 1974, was the first Indian ever to win a Grand Slam title, at the 1997 French Open mixed doubles, with the Japanese player Rika Hiraki. They had been paired late in the week after Hiraki’s original partner withdrew, and nobody told them they were supposed to win. They beat Lisa Raymond and Patrick Galbraith 6-4, 6-1 in the final. Twenty-nine years on, that first Grand Slam title remains the opening line of Indian tennis.

He went on to win three more men’s doubles Slams with Leander Paes, including the 1999 French Open and 1999 Wimbledon in the same calendar season, and the 2002 US Open men’s doubles with Max Mirnyi. Add seven more mixed-doubles titles, with various partners, over the decade that followed. Doubles World No. 1 in his own right. Twelve Grand Slam titles across the two categories. The Paes-Bhupathi partnership, which the Indian press called the Indian Express, became the thing every Davis Cup selection meeting in India has been judged against ever since.

Thailand

Paradorn Srichaphan

Paradorn, born in Thailand in June 1979, climbed to a career-high ATP singles ranking of World No. 9 on 12 May 2003. He is the first man from the Asian continent ever to crack the ATP top ten, eleven years before Nishikori became the first from Japan. He arrived in the top ten because of one afternoon in SW19 the summer before. On the Wednesday of the 2002 Wimbledon Championships, since known as Black Wednesday because Pete Sampras, Marat Safin and Andre Agassi all lost in the second round, Paradorn beat Agassi 6-4, 7-6, 6-2 on Centre Court. Agassi was the 1992 Wimbledon champion, the third seed, and nobody’s idea of a second-round casualty. Paradorn, ranked No. 67, hit fifteen aces, broke the Agassi serve six times, and after match point gave a Thai wai bow to each of the four corners of the stadium. It became his trademark.

My goal was to win the opening round, Paradorn told reporters afterwards. Then, when I saw I would play Andre in the next round, I thought, that’s it for me. I had nothing to lose, just go on court and enjoy. I just played my best today. It just happened. Five ATP singles titles followed, two Edberg Sportsmanship Awards in a row, the Thai flag at the opening ceremony of Athens 2004, and at Wimbledon 2003 he handed a seventeen-year-old Rafael Nadal his first ever Grand Slam defeat. Wrist injuries ended his career in 2007, and a motorcycle accident in June 2010 that broke both his hands ended any thought of return.

The ones who came before

Two names belong at the end rather than inside the ten, because they played before most of the above were born. Ramanathan Krishnan, from Madras, reached the Wimbledon semi-finals in 1960 and 1961, Davis Cup semi-finalist with India in 1966, the first Indian player of global stature. His son Ramesh and the younger generation that followed grew up in his shadow. Vijay Amritraj, also from Madras, reached the Wimbledon and US Open quarter-finals in 1973 and became the first Indian to beat multiple World No. 1s. Neither man ever won a Grand Slam. They are both still, in the Indian tennis clubs where you can hear it, the reason Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi exist.

The next in line

The farewell to Nishikori in Tokyo this week is not the end of Asian born tennis players succeeding on the ATP and WTA tours. The player most likely to be the next name on this list is Alex Eala, born in Manila on 23 May 2005, left-handed, and a graduate of the Rafa Nadal Academy in Mallorca. She reached a career-high WTA ranking of World No. 18 in August 2026, the highest ever by anybody born in Southeast Asia. At Wimbledon this summer she beat the World No. 2 Elena Rybakina and the World No. 3 Iga Świątek on consecutive match days before falling in the fourth round. A month later she won the Washington Open, her first WTA Tour title. She is only twenty-one.

Nishikori walked off court with Tokyo on its feet, but perhaps wondering where the next star will come from. It is far to say that Asian born men in the top echelons of the ATP are thin on the ground with only Coleman Wong of Hong Kong breaking into the ATP top hundred this year, the first man from his city to do so. The women's side of the tour is in a much healthier position. Alex Eala, nine thousand kilometres and almost thirty years away from him, is the biggest sports story the Philippines has ever produced. Six Asian-born women are inside the WTA top 100, from four different countries. Naomi Osaka (Japan) at thirteen, Alex Eala (Philippines) at eighteen, Wang Xinyu (China) at forty, Janice Tjen (Indonesia) at forty-six — the first Indonesian woman ever to make the top fifty — Zheng Qinwen (China) back up at fifty-four after her US Open quarter-final, and Zhang Shuai (China) at fifty-seven. Maybe Kei, in his retirement, will turn to finding and mentoring the next superstar.