On June 5, 1989, the day after the Chinese government sent troops to slaughter demonstrators gathered at Tiananmen Square, a 17-year-old American teenager with a bowl cut defeated world No. 1 Ivan Lendl in the fourth round of the French Open. Lendl was a three-time Roland Garros champion and merciless power baseliner riding high off his maiden Australian Open victory earlier in the season. Michael Chang, his opponent, was months into the second year of his professional career, and not yet old enough to vote. He was also visibly dehydrated throughout the match, cramping from the heat, and yelping in pain every time he was forced to lunge for a ball. By the fifth set, he famously relied on an underarm serve to give his body a break, much to Lendl’s chagrin.

The most lasting visual of that week — and perhaps of that decade — is of a lone male, unarmed, wearing a white shirt and holding a pair of shopping bags as he stands squarely in front of a column of military tanks: an unidentified David to an encroaching steel Goliath. But the images of Chang’s quick-snap desperation tactics have endured, too. And the events that unfolded in Tiananmen in the weeks and then hours before Chang walked on court — events that he watched on CNN with his mother in their hotel room every night — would irrevocably bind themselves to the outcome of his match with Lendl. The California son of Chinese parents, 5’9” in his Reeboks, wept on the clay. He won the title six days later.

Only once it was over, and the adrenaline had subsided, did it begin to dawn on Chang that the ultimate significance of his French Open triumph was not about him becoming the youngest male to win a Grand Slam title, or being the first American man to hold up the Coupe des Mousquetaires in 34 years. “It had to do with me being Chinese,” he told me over FaceTime in July.

His win, momentous as it may have been, didn’t usher in a golden age of Asian Americans in tennis. For the rest of his career, when he walked onto court as an Asian American player, he was usually the only one. (He only played four other Asian Americans during his tenure as a competitor.) But 23 years after Chang called it quits at the US Open, things have changed. Brandon Nakashima recently broke into the top 20 after a rollicking hard court summer swing, and many commentators and fans are abuzz about Michael Zheng, who has yet to crack the top 100, but just graduated from Columbia University and is gearing up for his US Open main draw debut. Most importantly for Chang, his protégé, Learner Tien, is on the verge of a major milestone.

At the start of 2025, Tien was No. 121 in the world. In November, he won his first title at the Moselle Open at the age of 19, the youngest American ATP champion since Andy Roddick in 2002. As of this writing, Tien is No. 15. He has never won a main draw first-round match at the US Open, and enters the tournament with few points to defend. This means that if he makes it to the second week — a very reasonable goal for a player of his talents — he could crack the top 10 for the first time. The last Asian American man to rank that highly was Chang himself, in 1997.

The ‘90s were a heyday for American men’s tennis. Of the dominant U.S. quartet — Chang, Andre Agassi, Jim Courier, Pete Sampras, all born within 18 months of each other — Chang was the first to break through with a major title. But he was also the only one not to win another. Chang’s résumé, in the end, was more muted than his compatriots, and he stood out in other ways, too. He was a star without the flash and fizzle of a supernova, even when he was hitting balls near the Great Wall of China in a Reebok ad. (Chang was the first Asian American to sign a multimillion-dollar sneaker endorsement deal.) He was measured, private, steadfastly Christian. He didn’t curse. He didn’t scream at the umps. He loved........

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