Coleman Wong is a recipient of the Cathay 2025 Hong Kong Sports Stars Awards (HKSSA) for men, the Sports Federation & Olympic Committee of Hong Kong, China (SF&OC) announced last night at the Awards Presentation Ceremony at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre. This is the fourth consecutive year the 21-year-old is bestowed with this accolade.
The SF&OC received 128 nominations from 56 National Sports Associations in this year’s HKSSA. After deliberation from the judging panel and the votes received from the media and public, winners from each category were revealed at the ‘Local Sports Oscars’.
It plays a vital role in rendering full support to the implementation of sports policies of the government in endorsing the development of the sports industry, including the professionalisation and promotion of sport among the local community and positioning Hong Kong as a global sports hub.
“Aside from the talent and effort of the athletes, appropriate resources and policy directives must be in place in order to provide an environment that is conducive to sustain sports development in Hong Kong,” said HKCTA President, Michael Cheng.
“The awards ceremony is a celebration of sporting excellence to honour the city’s outstanding athletes, and to see a tennis player being the recipient for the fourth year in a row means our sport is growing and adds further credence to our tennis transformation strategy through activation,” he added.
Wong registered a number of breakthroughs in 2025 that set a new benchmark for Hong Kong men’s tennis.
On the Davis Cup front, Wong was undefeated in World Group II, as he won both singles and doubles rubbers against Namibia and Uzbekistan respectively to help the team reach the World Group I Playoffs.
Hong Kong, China had not been in this position since reaching the Group II Final in 2003. His 16 career wins in singles also put him just one shy of equalling Mark Bailey and Colin Grant’s all-time record of 17 set in 1991 and 1992 respectively.
At the Miami Open, Wong became the first player from Hong Kong to reach the 3rd round of an ATP Masters 1000 event after he defeated world No. 14 Ben Shelton 7-6(3) 2-6 7-6(5). The genuine excitement and candour he showed in the post-match interview at the Tennis Channel desk with Prakash Amritraj gave Hong Kong tennis a much bigger dose of mainstream exposure rarely seen abroad.
He was also the first player from Hong Kong to compete in the maindraw of the Masters 1000 Madrid and the first to qualify for the Masters 1000 Cincinnati, where he went on to beat world No. 42 Mpetshi Perricard to reach the second round.
At the US Open, he became the first player from Hong Kong to reach the third round of a Grand Slam and he made the vastly more experienced No. 15 seed Andrey Rublev work hard for his five-set win 2-6 6-4 6-3 4-6 6-3.
Rublev had held a year-end top 8 ranking five straight seasons from 2020 to 2024.
In Seoul in November, Wong beat former world No. 19 Chung Hyeon in the first round and 114th-ranked Chinese No. 1 Bu Yunchaokete in the quarters en route to his fifth career Challenger final. This marked the first time a player from Hong Kong had beaten the No. 1-ranked player from China since the first computerised ATP rankings were officially released in August 1973.
The last event of 2025 for Wong was the 15th National Games. It took place at nearby Hengqin International Tennis Centre where, for the first time in history, the quadrennial event is being co-hosted by Guangdong, Hong Kong, and Macau.
Apart from Zheng Qinwen, who was still recovering from an injury, all the top Chinese players in the region gathered in Zhuhai. Wong was seeded No. 2 behind Bu Yunchaokete but ahead of Wu Yibing at three, and Jerry Shang at four.
In the much-anticipated semifinal showdown against Wu Yibing, Wong took the opening set and then fought off four set points in a row in the second set tiebreak to even at 6-6, leaving him just two points away from victory. They were all square again at 7-7 before Wu Yibing came through to claim the breaker 9-7 and force a decider.
Wu Yibing broke Wong in the opening game of the third set and played extremely well to ride that one-break advantage right until the end when he conjured a spectacular forehand winner on match point to prevail 6-7(6) 7-6(7) 6-4.
Nevertheless, Wong is the first player from Hong Kong to win a singles medal at the National Games. The previous high was when Yu Hiu Tung and Wayne Wong placed 6th and 8th respectively at the 10th National Games in Nanjing in 2005. Wong’s medal was also Hong Kong’s first tennis medal since John Hui and Melvin Tong won their ground-breaking bronze in men’s doubles back in 2001.
In 2018, Wong was also a recipient of the Hong Kong Most Promising Sports Stars Award.
The HKCTA also nominated Eudice Chong in the Hong Kong Sports Stars Awards for women, as well as the 15th National Games bronze medal-winning squad comprising Jack Cheng, Nicholas Cheng, Walter Tam, Kai Thompson, and Wong Tsz Fu in the Hong Kong Sports Stars Awards for Sports Combination category.
During 2025, Chong captured a pair of WTA 125 doubles titles, at Jingshan and Changsha, in addition to reaching her second career WTA 250 doubles final at the Guangzhou Open, and she is the first player from Hong Kong to accomplish these feats.
She also reached a new career-high WTA doubles ranking of No.93, becoming the first player from Hong Kong to crack the world’s top 100 since Patricia Hy in 1987. She registered her first top 100 win against Suzie Lamens, becoming the first local to score a maindraw win in singles at the WTA 250 Prudential Hong Kong Tennis Open since the inaugural event in 1980.
The Hong Kong Sports Stars Awards first witnessed tennis among its recipients when Brian Hung and Martin Sayer captured the Hong Kong Junior Sports Stars and Potential Sports Stars Awards respectively in 2003. In 2007, Jessica Yang was among the six winners of the Hong Kong Junior Sports Stars Award after anchoring the 16U team to a place in the Junior Fed Cup Finals the previous year.