Fourteen-year-old Nguyen Hoang Thien and 22-year-old national champion Nguyen Thuy Dung are currently Vietnam leading tennis players

One more sign of big money in Vietnamese sports these days is the amount that wealthy parents are willing to expend on their children, not just to learn a game, but nurturing talent with expensive training abroad.

Nguyen Hoang Thien, the nation’s first teenage tennis prodigy, has become a familiar name among sports fans for the last year, winning several tournaments and rising to the top position in Asia.

Apart from his talent, the 14-yearold’s huge success owes a lot to money his parents were able to pump in for several years.

“Thien became very interested in tennis when he was eight years old,” said his father Nguyen Ngoc Minh. “When he was 10, we sent him to the Saddle Brook School at the Florida Academy to learn to play.”

After a few years of training in the US with Indian American coach Ashok Bikkannvar, Thien has emerged as the best U14 player in Asia. He has won several tournaments, some of which are for U16 or U18 players.

Last October, Thien won the U18 International Tennis Federation (ITF) Becamex Cup in Binh Duong Province that neighbors Ho Chi Minh City.

In March this year, Thien won the Asian U14 Boys ITF Group 1 second round Championship in Indonesia. He also shared the Asian U14 boys doubles championship title with Syrian player Naow.

Recently, he won the U16 boys’ singles and doubles championships at the Youth National Tennis Championships 2009 in the Central Highlands province of Dak Lak.

“Thien’s achievement so far is just the beginning for him,” Minh said. “We want him to be a professional player and at least among the world’s top 500. Then he can earn a certain amount of money from professional competitions to pay for his expenses.”

American coach Coofer Smith, who has trained many big names including Serbian star Jelena Jankovic, has been hired to train Thien.

Smith said, “I could see Thien has the ability to improve a lot and I have agreed to train him. Now, he is ranked 560th in the world in the U18 [category]. I believe he will be much better in a few months.”

Minh said, “If Thien continues this way, he will be able to compete in important tournaments in the region and the world.

“Now, we just want him to play and learn from the experience. In the coming time, Thien will go to Ireland and around Europe to compete and gain more points before returning to participate in the ITF tournament in Vietnam in October.”

The female hope

Another outstanding tennis player in the country is Nguyen Thuy Dung. The 22-year-old woman has no rivals on the domestic scene.

“Every parent wants her children to be successful in life,” said Dung’s mother Dao Le Thuy, who has just returned from a trip to Thailand to visit Dung. “We have been spending a lot of money in the hope of helping her become a world class professional tennis player.”

Dung has been training in the sport for around 10 years. “At 12, I began to play tennis and the more I played, the more interested I became in the game.

“When I was 19, my parents decided to help me become a professional player. I am very grateful to them because they have spent a lot of money on me so far.”

If Dung was in a family with a modest income, she would never have had the opportunity to take to tennis. Dung’s parents are business people, so they have the means to help her.

Dung’s parents have done more than just give her money. Three years ago, they flew to Thailand to get information about the school and trainers there before sending her for training.

Dung trained in Thailand for a year at a total cost of about US$3,500. Then she went to England, but she left after three weeks.

“Now, Dung is training at Vic Barden Tennis College in Utah, the US,” Thuy said.

Dung, who was a semifinalist at the ITF competitions in Thailand and India in 2008, is now on Vietnam’s list of athletes for the 2012 London Olympic Games.

“My dream is to be among the world’s top 500 players and earn from professional tournaments to pay for my expenses,” Dung said. “My parents have great expectations. I don’t want to let them down.”

Reported by Quang Tuyen – Lan Phuong