A Survey and Research on Family Background Conditions of Active Professional Tennis Players at Home and Abroad

Tennis is a high-investment, long-cycle sport with extremely high professionalization thresholds. Family capital serves as the core supporting factor for athletes’ initial training, professional transformation and long-term competitive development. Taking 200 ATP and WTA top 100 active overseas professional tennis players as well as 50 top 50 domestic active professional tennis players registered with the Chinese Tennis Association in 2025 as research samples, this paper adopts research methods including case analysis, comparative research and inductive analysis. From three dimensions covering economic capital, cultural capital and sports social capital, it sorts out the family background characteristics of active players at home and abroad, analyzes the influence of family background on players’ professional paths, competitive ceilings and professional life cycles, and clarifies the family differences in tennis talent cultivation between China and foreign countries. The research concludes that most world-class professional tennis players come from middle-class or wealthy families and sports families, while players from ordinary working-class families account for a low proportion. Most domestic professional players are raised by middle-class families and sports practitioner families, yet top wealthy families are scarce. Deficiencies in family funds, professional cognition and accompanying resources restrict the advancement of grassroots players. Accordingly, this paper puts forward optimized paths for family-based tennis cultivation adapted to China’s national conditions, providing references for the cultivation of domestic professional tennis talents.