Yibing Wu

Yibing Wu is the player who pushed Chinese men's tennis past a barrier that had stood the entire Open Era. Born in Hangzhou in 1999, he became the first Chinese male to win a Junior Grand Slam at the 2017 US Open, and rose to junior world No. 1 after that win. The pro climb then stalled badly: he didn't compete from March 2019 to December 2021, dealing with elbow, back, shoulder and wrist injuries and undergoing elbow surgery in 2020. His ranking had dipped to 1869 in March 2022, and he climbed over 1,800 spots from there.

Right-handed and built around an aggressive baseline game, Wu hits big off both wings and takes the ball early — a high-initiative style that, paired with a heavy serve, separates him from prior generations of Chinese men. In his 2023 tour season he averaged only 0.16 double faults per game, converted 42% of break points, and held at 52% on second serves — the profile of a shotmaker who lives on first-strike tennis.

The defining run came at the 2023 Dallas Open, where Wu beat Denis Shapovalov, Adrian Mannarino and top seed Taylor Fritz — the first Chinese man in the Open Era to defeat a top-10 opponent — before saving four championship points to beat John Isner 6-7(4), 7-6(3), 7-6(12) and become the first Chinese player to lift an ATP Tour trophy. He peaked at world No. 54 on 29 May 2023, the third-highest-ranked male Chinese player in history. A year earlier at the 2022 US Open he'd become the first man from China in 63 years to win a major main-draw match, reaching the third round before losing to Daniil Medvedev.

Now ranked 92, Wu remains China's top-ranked man, still chasing the consistency the injuries kept stripping away — every deep run a referendum on whether the body holds.