American tennis legend Michael Chang is likely to coach Chinese player Peng Shuai, a tennis official confirmed on Sunday.

The Chinese-American worked with Peng, a 21-year-old from Tianjin, during the Pacific Life Open in Indian Wells California last week.

China Daily confirmed that negotiations between Chang and Tianjin Sports Bureau are underway.

"There is some possibility that Chang will be able to team up with Peng," said Gao Shenyang, vice-director of China's Tennis Administrative Center. "Officials from Tianjin want Chang to coach Peng so they started to contact Chang in January."

According to Gao, a leading official from Tianjin held talks with Chang in the United States last week but both sides have yet to reach a decision.

"We have kept in touch with Chang in recent months and I think his arrival will be quite good for us," Gao said. "It's still the early stages, but everything is possible between Chang and Tianjin," he said.

The 34-year-old Chinese-American, known as Zhang Depei in China, first expressed his interest in coaching the Chinese tennis team at the Masters Cup in Shanghai in November. However his anticipated role as coach of Li Na and Peng Shuai failed to materialize.

"It's not a sure bet that a great player can be an equally great coach," China's tennis chief Sun Jinfang said at the time. "I think he can get in touch with our women's players first, to see if the girls like working with their childhood hero, that's very very important as we are a whole team not only one or two individuals."

Chang, however, did his homework in an effort to help land the first job of his coaching career. He spent five weeks improving his putonghua at a school in Beijing before the Masters Cup and also watched some of Li and Zheng Jie's matches.

Chang's possible involvement in Chinese tennis has been welcomed by the players.

"I think it's good for Peng Shuai and good for this sport in China," China's top women's player Li, who reached the semifinals at the Pacific Life Open, was quoted as saying. "China has a lot of good players and the Federation has been trying to find a lot of good coaches to teach the players."

Peng, now World No 40, had a successful year in 2005 when she soared in the rankings and beat a series of elite opponents including Anastasia Myskina, Nadia Petrova, former world No 1 Belgian Kim Clijsters and Elena Dementieva in her two Tier I event semifinal appearances. She reached a then national record ranking of 32 last August.

But her performance slipped the following year as she suffered seven first round exits in 13 tournaments. She lost in the second round at the Australian Open this year and her best result so far is a semifinal finish at the Pattaya City Open in February.

Chang became the youngest French Open champion in history after beating Stefan Edberg in a five-set thriller in the 1989 final at the age of 17. He was among the very best players in the 1990's along with fellow countrymen Andre Agassi, Pete Sampras and Jim Courier.

(China Daily March 20, 2007)