Year 6 & 7 trip to Tianjin Open Tennis Tournament, October 2019

On Wednesday 9^th October, Wellington College Tianjin students from Year 6 and 7 had a wonderful opportunity to attend the 2019 Tianjin Open Tennis Tournament, held at Tuanbo International Tennis Centre. The highlight of the day was when they got to play some tennis against professional player Kurumi Nara, from Japan. She was very happy to meet our pupils and enjoyed signing autographs for them. After that, we watched a doubles match between Great Britain and China, much to the delight of our staff and pupils. Inside the stadium, we were lucky enough to catch a ball that was signed and hit into the crowd by Yulia Putintseva after she won her match. In perhaps the biggest result of the tournament so far, we got to see Chinese star Yafan Wang beat Caroline Garcia of France on centre court in straight sets. Finally, we were given the amazing opportunity to tour the VIP area, where the players are located behind the scenes. This gave our pupils a chance to see the media area, the player restaurant and relaxation area, as well as the indoor practice courts. We also got a chance to see how the strings are fixed to the professional’s tennis rackets and couldn’t believe it when they found out the players had to pay for new strings after every match! All the pupils on the trip conducted themselves excellently, and we look forward to taking them when the tournament returns to Tianjin next year.