On the afternoon of November 4 (Beijing Time), the Chinese tennis player Zhang Shuai, being the 28^th on the WTA singles rankings, officially became the first professional tennis player signed and sponsored by Gemdale Corporation. Following the sponsorship, the Chinese "Golden Flower" with the highest rank among the Chinese female tennis players will strike the world in international tournaments with a new appearance wearing shirts imprinted with Gemdale logo.?

According the WTA rankings as of October 31, Zhang Shuai was ranked the 28th among female singles with 1,585 points in total, being the only Asian player among top 30. Born in 1989, the girl from Tianjin started her tennis playing at an young age of 6. In August 2008, the 19-year old girl got three successive wins in qualifying in the 2008 US Open and made her first entry into the Grand Slam event. In 2010, she was one of the female tennis group champion in Guangzhou Asian Games. In 2013, Zhang Shuai won her singles title in Guangzhou International Women's Open. In 2016, she roared into the quarterfinals for the first time in Australian Open. The same year at the Rio 2016 Summer Olympic Games, Zhang Shuai represented China in Tennis Women's Doubles and Singles and made it respectively in the Round of 32 and Round of 16.

The signing ceremony for Gemdale sponsoring Zhang Shuai was held right before the semi-finals of WTA Elite Trophy Zhuhai. In the female singles group games concluded the day before, Zhang Shuai beat Hungarian female player TimeaBabos 7-6 (2), 6-4 with seven ace balls to secure the top spot in her group with two wins, and made her way to the semi-finals.

Regarding the sponsorship of Gemdale, Zhang Shuai said, "I am very happy and it is also a great honor to sign this sponsorship with Gemdale. I will keep up and even try to make further step ahead to pay back Gemdale's trust in me."

To Gemdale, joining hands with professional players is one of the ways to facilitate the development of the Chinese tennis. As the principal sponsor of Shenzhen Open, Gemdale has always been committed to the development of the tennis sports. In addition to tennis clubs operated in cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, Shenzhen and Dalian, Gemdale has also formed a professional tennis team and set up an international tennis academy for training tennis talents. When being asked about the reason for sponsoring Zhang Shuai, the representative of Gemdale Corporation Mr. Liu Fengning said, "We are looking at not only the top-ranking competition skills and the potential commercial value of Zhang Shuai, but more importantly, the spiritual quality of the player – integrity & kindness, endeavor& aggressiveness, and toughness & persistence – which coheres with the cultural concept we have been sticking to at Gemdale."

Following the conclusion of the signing ceremony, the cooperation between Gemdale and Zhang Shuai was officially kicked off. It was said that Gemdale will give full support to Zhang Shuai in aspects like funding, team, site and coaching resources so that she can be more concentrated on competitions without any concerns. Mr. Liu Fengning also expressed his confidence in this cooperation, "We believe that Zhang Shuaiis just making a jump start with existing achievements made, and we together will witness the glorious future of her career life, the Gemdale Corporation and the Chinese tennis."