Teen prodigy Li Tu poised for remarkable return

Adelaide coach Li Tu is a former star junior who has returned to competitive tennis after studying and is now hopeful of making it on the ATP Tour.

Li Tu, a former star junior tennis player on the comeback trail, has his fingers crossed for an Australian Open qualifying wildcard Picture: Morgan Sette

At some stage in the afterlife of every athletic career, an itch for competition returns.

Be it a champion or an enthusiast, for most it is a fleeting lament for what has been and gone. But South Australian tennis player Li Tu is one of the lucky ones.

When the itch returned midway through this year, the former star junior was still young enough to scratch it and fulfil the potential of his youth.

Over the past four months in Australia, from Adelaide to Brisbane and in between, there has scarcely been a hotter player in the country.

With all bar Australia’s highest-ranked players restricted to playing at home, Tu has won six titles and almost $20,000 on the Universal Tennis Rating Pro Tour.

“I can’t believe the level of tennis I am playing now compared to five months ago,” he told The Weekend Australian.

“I can’t believe it was just five months ago that I made the call that I would give it a crack. I have had some pretty amazing results to finish the year.”

For a bloke doing some coaching on the side while finishing a commerce degree at Adelaide University not too long ago, it is an outstanding record.

The 24-year-old has victories over peers who have been touring the world for years. And he has earned some handy pocket money as well while picking up title after title.

But the biggest prize may yet arrive as a late Christmas present should he receive a wildcard into the Australian Open qualifying tournament.

He will need the wildcard for the event to be played in the UAE, for Tu is without an ATP Tour ranking.

The UTR Tour does not carry ranking points and Australian border restrictions have made it impossible to travel internationally through 2020.

But with renowned coach Darren Cahill among those pushing his cause, there is a chance the Adelaide native will be vying for an Australian Open spot.

“I don’t have a ranking so it is kind of hard to play stuff overseas. Obviously with COVID-19, it is pretty tough,” he said.

“But I will play in any event anywhere they’ll have me. I guess I am waiting to hear about that wildcard and see where that gets me. Darren Cahill is putting in a good word for me.”

Anyone who set eyes on Tu as a teenager would not be surprised he is mixing it with some of Australia’s highest-ranked players as a senior.

As a kid, he represented Australia in the junior Davis Cup in a team that included Thanasi Kokkinakis.

An old gym underneath Adelaide Oval has photographs of the pair in their green and gold tracksuits, all hair and not a lot of height.

And Tu could play. Borna Coric, a quarterfinalist at the US Open in September, was a junior rival.

Tu recalls bumping into US Open finalist Alexander Zverev at the World Tennis Challenge in Adelaide a few years back.

He asked the world No 7 if he could remember him. Zverev’s response was swift.

“He said to me, ‘I remember. You chopped me up when we were about 11’,” Tu said.

“I had a reputation for being quite talented, but I genuinely believe I put in the work to get to where I got to.”

Like many junior players, the transition to senior ranks proved testing.

Losses started coming against players who did not boast the junior reputation of Tu and he struggled to understand what was going wrong.

A loss of confidence coincided with a waning love of the sport. The racquets were shelved, a university degree enrolled in and with that some coaching for pocket money.

It may, in hindsight, prove the best move Tu made. After finishing his studies, he launched a coaching business M2tennis in Adelaide with a mentor in Ben Milner.

A number of successful juniors have blossomed under their tutelage and it was while instructing them on the finer points of the sport that Tu realised something about himself.

The message he would deliver them after strong wins or tight losses was simple. Only a couple of points separated the victor from the vanquished. A lesson could be learnt.

But it was one Tu realised he had ignored himself when too stressed by the win-loss record in his late teenage years.

On the court now, he is far more relaxed about the match itself.

The right-hander knows he can handle life outside the baselines. But now he has a chance to succeed again with the confines of the court.

“What does work for me is to be more relaxed, to have a good time and be able to have a laugh about it. I never used to do that,” he said.

He leant on a friend Daniel Buberis, who runs a tennis foundation in the Philippines as a side project, to devise a fitness program and has stripped down to 81kg from 92kg since August.

Milner has been a significant help. And Cahill, whose children are coached at M2Tennis, has jumped on court once or twice as well.

Given Cahill was a US Open semi-finalist who has subsequently coached Lleyton Hewitt, Andre Agassi and Simona Halep to the world’s top ranking, he is a handy man to have in Tu’s corner.

“He asked me recently what my shoe size was and then he gave me some of his old Nike stuff that he had lying around … and we jumped on court for a hit,” he said.

“It is great to have a team behind me in Ben and Daniel and having that experience of Darren, it is pretty cool.”