[8] After rising to #163 in the world as a 15-year-old amateur, Chang dropped out of tenth grade at San Dieguito High School in Encinitas to pursue a professional tennis career.

Chang first came to the tennis world's attention at age 12 as an outstanding junior player who set numerous "youngest-ever" records.

[9] On 1 September 1987, at age 15, Chang became the youngest player to win a main draw match at the US Open when he defeated Paul McNamee in four sets (6–3, 6–7, 6–4, 6-4) in the first round.

[14] In 1988, aged 16 years and seven months, he won his first top-level singles title at San Francisco, defeating Johan Kriek in the final.

[10] During his title run, Chang registed a 6-4, 6-0 win over Mikael Pernfors, the 1986 French Open finalist who just the previous week had beaten Andre Agassi in the finals of Los Angeles.

[12] Chang's most significant "youngest-ever" record came in 1989 when he won the French Open at the age of 17 years, 110 days, to become the youngest male player ever to win a Grand Slam title.

Those tactics included hitting shots high into the air (known as "moon balls") to slow the match down and going for more winners in order to shorten the points.

Then seven days after his match against Lendl, after beating Stefan Edberg in five sets, Chang went on to lift the Coupe des Mousquetaires, becoming the youngest men's champion in Grand Slam history.

Chang has frequently noted the impact of the massacre when recalling his French Open victory: A lot of people forget that Tiananmen Square was going on.

The crackdown that happened was on the middle Sunday at the French Open, so if I was not practicing or playing a match, I was glued to the television, watching the events unfold...I often tell people I think it was God's purpose for me to be able to win the French Open the way it was won because I was able to put a smile on Chinese people's faces around the world at a time when there wasn't much to smile about.

In the 1995 French Open, he defeated Michael Stich and then two-time defending champion Sergi Bruguera in the semifinals in straight sets, eventually losing to Muster.

In the 1997 U.S. Open, he was the odds-on favorite to win after Sampras was upset by Petr Korda; however, Chang lost to eventual champion Patrick Rafter in the semifinals in straight sets.

Chang was the first player to be beaten by Roger Federer in the main draw of a Grand Slam tournament, at the 2000 Australian Open.

For much of his professional career, he was coached by his older brother Carl Chang, who also played in several doubles tournaments with him in the early 1990s.

Chang's success marked the start of an era in which a new generation of American players—which also included Pete Sampras, Jim Courier, and Andre Agassi—would come to dominate the game.

His best performance in the year-end singles championship came in 1995, when he defeated Muster, Jim Courier, and then dominated Pete Sampras in the semifinals, before losing in the final to Boris Becker.

He chose to skip the 1996 Summer Olympics despite the fact that the event was held in Atlanta and that he would have been the tournament's number-one seed (the singles' gold medal was won by Andre Agassi).

[40] He started using the Prince "Precision Michael Chang Graphite" 28-inch signature racket in 1994, which was an inch longer than the standard model.

[52][53] Chang and his family established CMCB Enterprises, which has real estate holdings including shopping malls, in California, Texas, Arizona and Colorado.

In his home in Mercer Island, Washington, he set up several fresh-water aquariums, his largest being 240 gallons, eight-feet long by two feet high, which he uses to breed African cichilds among other things.

[61][62] Chang attended the master's in ministry program at Biola University in La Mirada, California, for a year and a half.