ZHENGZHOU, March 20 (Xinhua) -- The Zhengzhou Open tennis tournament has been upgraded to a WTA Premier event with prize money of one million U.S. dollars, and will be held from September 9 to 15, the local sports authority said on Wednesday.
The Zhengzhou Open features both singles and doubles tournaments, with the singles' champion receiving 470 ranking points.
"WTA identified China very early as a potential growth market. In 2008, we only had two tournaments in China's mainland, but today we have nine, including the WTA Shenzhen Open, and China is the only country which has events in each category of WTA," said Fabrice Chouquet, the WTA's Managing Director for Asia-Pacific.
Capital of central China's Henan Province, Zhengzhou had in 2017 and 2018 hosted tournaments on the WTA's second-tier 125k series.
"Staging different levels of tennis events in China will attract more and more people to take part in the game, and provide a greater platform for Chinese players to promote the development of tennis," said Wan Jianbin, from China's General Administration of Sports.
