Tennis player Hsieh Su-wei (謝淑薇) hit the headlines in 2013 when she won the Wimbledon Ladies’ Doubles title with Chinese partner Peng Shuai (彭帥), becoming the first Taiwanese to claim a Grand Slam, one of the sport’s four major tournaments.
For the next year or so success followed success as the “Cross-Strait Duo” added the French Open and WTA Tour Championships titles to their resumes, culminating in the pair becoming the top-ranked female doubles players in the world.
Award-winning film director Chung Chuan (鍾權) charts Hsieh’s meteoric rise in Match Point, which was screened for the first time last month at the Centre for Taiwan Studies, part of the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies.
Photo courtesy of Chung Chuan
The film, which took three years to make, follows Hsieh around the global tennis circuit and features interviews with the tennis star, her father Hsieh Tzu-lung (謝子龍) and coach Paul McNamee, among others.
PUSHY TENNIS DAD
However, the film is no mere cinematic hagiography, offering a raw and revealing insight into Hsieh’s life, especially the often fractious relationship with her father.
Photos courtesy of Jewel Lo
The tennis star explains that as a child she was not initially that keen on the sport, but her father recognized that she had talent and nurtured it. He had discovered tennis, having previously known next to nothing about it, when he happened to walk past a court one day and saw people playing. Liking what he saw, he got some coaching and introduced his children to the game.
Su-wei, the fourth of seven siblings, showed the most potential and Hsieh senior set about honing her skills. Success in junior competitions followed but it came at a price.
An unsettled childhood, shuttling between tournaments and sleeping in a car to save money, culminated in the 16-year-old Hsieh running away from home after a tongue-lashing too far from her demanding father.
For the next three years Hsieh lived in Japan, paying her way with prize money won playing for a tennis club in local tournaments.
Hsieh senior is far from unique, the pushy tennis dad being no stranger to the sport. The father of former world No. 3 Mary Pierce, Jim, was banned from attending tournaments after verbally abusing his daughter and opponents, while the behavior of current star Timea Bacsinszsky’s father was so extreme she demanded her mother divorce him.
Hsieh Tzu-lung never plunged such depths, though, and eventually father and daughter were reconciled. However, the film shows that things are not all sweetness and light between the pair.
DOUBLES TROUBLE
Hsieh’s relationship with doubles partner Peng also had its ups and downs. Their off-court friendship was strained by on-court tensions, despite the enormous success they enjoyed, and the two no longer play together.
Speaking with the aid of a translator after the screening, Chung explained how initially he had planned to shoot a straightforward record of Hsieh’s life in tennis. However, it became clear as filming progressed that she had a number of issues that needed addressing.
“I realized during the process of talking through her life and her relationship with her family, [that] actually it was a process of catharsis, a kind of therapeutic process, as we traveled around the world talking about her past and her present,” he said.
As well as disagreements with her father, we see the stress placed on Hsieh by her siblings’ reliance on her success to fund their sporting ambitions.
She also has a less than ideal relationship with the Taiwanese press, who she says portray her unfairly, particularly regarding money. At times she feels like walking away from the game altogether.
There are plenty of lighter moments, though, such as when former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) gets her name wrong at a reception to celebrate her Wimbledon triumph and when she compares her bottom unfavorably with that of Serena Williams.
The screening of Match Point was part of the program of events at the Centre of Taiwan Studies Summer School, which included the showing of two other films with sporting themes by Chung, The Affair of Three Cities (台北京之比賽) and The Chai-Wan Matchup (我們). These respectively feature baseball and the Olympic Games, exploring issues of nationalism and identity in the process.
Chung has no plans to release Match Point commercially, but it would be a pity if such a fascinating work was only to be seen at film festivals or university campuses.
Hsieh’s honesty is to be commended and her story is far more than a catalog of on-court triumphs.
She is due to play in the singles competition at this month’s Rio Olympics, but was in the news recently after announcing that she was pulling out of the doubles following a spat with the Chinese Taipei Tennis Association.
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