Peng Shuai

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**Peng Shuai**

Country	China
Residence	China
Date of birth	January 8, 1986
Place of birth	Hunan, China
Height	5 ft 8 in (173 cm)
Weight	135 lbs (61.2 kg)
Turned Pro	2001
Plays	Right; Two-handed both sides
Career Prize Money	$486,486
Singles
Career record:	149-67
Career titles:	0 (8 ITF titles)
Highest ranking:	No. 31 (August 15, 2005)
Grand Slam results
Australian Open	2nd Round (2005)
French Open	2nd Round (2005, 2006)
Wimbledon	3rd Round (2006)
U.S. Open	1st Round (2005, 2006)
Doubles
Career record:	48-42
Career titles:	0 (3 ITF titles)
Highest ranking:	No. 47 (August 15, 2005)
Infobox last updated on: July 1, 2006.

This is a Chinese name; the family name is Peng.

Peng Shuai (彭帅) (born January 8, 1986, Hunan, China) is a professional female tennis player from the People's Republic of China.

She began playing at age eight when an uncle (the only other family member who plays tennis and a famous tennis coach in China) introduced her to the game. She favors hard courts and forehand (though her backhand is the better side) Her father Peng Jijun is a police officer and her mother is Zhang Bing. She likes the color red and enjoys Chinese cuisine ... Past-times include reading and shopping ... Enjoys swimming, playing soccer ... She considers herself ‘very quiet’. She Admires Steffi Graf and John McEnroe.

Her game is built upon hard-flat strokes generated by two hands on both sides. She hits the ball very cleanly, especially off her backhand. Her compact strokes allow her to change easily, and she likes to hit the ball down the line from both sides. Her weakness is her serve, with a ball toss that sometimes drifts too far to the left. Her movement is also not the quickest, and that can put her in defensive positions given limited reach when drawn out wide.

In 2001, at the beginning of June, aged just fifteen years and four months, she won her first singles title at Bautau, a $10,000 ITF tournament, after entering as a wildcard, and crushing highly capable countrywoman Sun Tiantian 6-1 6-4 in the semi-final. In July, she won her second $10,000 tournament of the year (although she was assisted in the final by the retirement of her opponent Liu Nan-nan after just one game was played, and in the following week's tournament she lost to Liu in the semi-final). Then in October she debuted on the WTA Tour at Shanghai as a wildcard, losing in the first round to Tamarine Tanasugarn.

In February 2002, she won her third $10,000 ITF singles title in the space of nine months at Mumbai, defeating Sunitha Rao in the final. The following week, she extended her match-winning streak to twelve by coming through qualifying to reach the final of a $25,000 tournament at New Delhi, with wins over Aiko Nakamura and Sybille Bammer, before losing in the championship match to Eva Birnerova. In July, she succeeded in qualifying for the main draw of a $50,000 tournament at Lexington; but further success proved elusive, and after a second successive first-round main draw defeat in early August she took nearly seven months off from competition at singles events, ending the year world-ranked just 357.

It was not until April 2003 that she next won a match; but then she proceeded to put in her career-best performance, coming through qualifying to win her first $25,000 title at Jackson, with match wins against Rika Fujiwara, Tatiana Golovin and Christina Wheeler among others. After disappointing summer results, she started to play more consistently again towards the end of the year; and in December, she won her first $50,000 event, and the fifth ITF title of her young career, at Changsha, with victories over Yuka Yoshida, Yan Zi (tennis player) and Zheng Jie, salvaging her year-end ranking, which had improved only slightly overall to 326, and heralding her coming breakthrough the following year.

In February 2004, she reached her third $25,000 singles event final at Columbus, Ohio, only to be defeated by future superstar Nicole Vaidisova in the tantalisingly close tournament decider, 6-7 5-7. The following month, she qualified for another $50,000 event, at Orange, CA, with wins over Neha Uberoi and Mashona Washington, then defeated Catalina Castano and Camille Pin to reach the main-draw quarter-final, before losing in three sets to Yulia Begelzimer. Among further consistent results in ITF tournaments, she was victorious in what was the first ever $75,000 tournament she had entered, defeating Angela Haynes, Yuka Yoshida and Evgenia Linetskaya in straight sets at Dothan to take her sixth career ITF singles title. A month later, she proved this was no accident by winning her second $75,000 event, fending off some tough competition from Lucie Safarova and Barbora Strycova en route to a comfortable final victory over Zuzana Ondraskova.

With the season's excellent results propelling her rapidly upwards in the rankings, she gained direct entry into her first Grand Slam main draw at Wimbledon (though without match-wins to show for it), but narrowly missed the cut at the US Open, losing a close battle in the first round of qualifying to Anastasia Rodionova. But the emerging Chinese star persisted in trying her hand at other WTA Tour events, and worked her way to considerable success at Cincinnati in August, defeating some high-class opponents in Stephanie Foretz, Jill Craybas and Alina Jidkova to reach her first WTA Tour quarter-final, before losing to a Top 20 player, Vera Zvonareva of Russia. A second quarter-final performance followed at Guangzhou in September, after she virtually blew French star Marion Bartoli off the court for the loss of just one game in Round Two, only to be ousted in turn herself by countrywoman Li Ting.

The year ended on a further high note for Peng, as she won her second $50,000 title and eighth overall career ITF singles title at Shenzhen 2 in November, with impressive victories over her countrywomen Sun Tiantian and Zheng Jie. (She had also reached the semi-final at Shenzhen 1 the previous week, only to lose to recent Guangzhou champion Li Na.) She ended the year world-ranked 73, after a meteoric rise. It was the first time she had finished in the WTA Top 300, let alone the Top 75; and thereafter she was able to bid the ITF events adieu, focussing solely on WTA draws.

In January 2005, she came through a tough qualifying draw at Sydney comfortably, and went on to reach her first WTA Tour semifinal. On the way, she upset the no. 2 seed Anastasia Myskina in the second round in straight sets, in addition to defeating Camille Pin, Tzipora Obziler, Denisa Chladkova and Mashona Washington, all without dropping a set. In the quarter-final, she was up 6-3 4-2 against Russian star Nadia Petrova, and well on target for another shock straight-sets victory, when Petrova retired. But Alicia Molik was on top form and finally ousted Peng in the semi-final. The following week, at the Australian Open, the Chinese star finally won her first grand slam singles match, defeating Maria Elena Camerin of Italy 6-1 6-2, before being overcome by Venus Williams in Round Two.

An ankle injury in February made her miss several tournaments in February and March. On her return to competition in April, she lost two successive titanic second-round tussles to high-class players, namely Vera Zvonareva and Justine Henin-Hardenne, each match running to three close sets. At Strasbourg in May, she reached another WTA quarter-final, with wins over Tamarine Tanasugarn and brilliant young French talent Tatiana Golovin, before losing in three sets to Marta Domachowska of Poland. At the French Open, she also took Lindsay Davenport into a deciding set in their second-round match.

In August, she topped all her previous achievements by reaching her first WTA Tour Tier I semifinal at San Diego, posting upsets over then World Number 6 Elena Dementieva, World Number 26 Dinara Safina and World Number 7 Kim Clijsters, all in straight sets. Her victory over Kim Clijsters, who was on her way back to being World No. 1 after only a few months back on the tour following injury, ended the Belgian's 26-consecutive-match-winning streak on hard courts. Following the match, Kim told reporters that Peng had the potential to become a top 3 tennis player. Although an inspired Mary Pierce had her way in the semi-final, Peng's outstanding performance in this tournament helped her to her career-best singles ranking (31st) on August 15, 2005, which was also the highest ever singles ranking achieved by any Chinese women's tennis player, improving on the standard set by Li Na, who peaked at 33 earlier the same year (though she may yet ascend to new heights).

By September 2005, Peng ranked among the top 5 female tennis players across the whole Asian continent. That month, she reached two further WTA quarter-finals, at Beijing and (for the second year running) Guangzhou, where she retired in her quarter-final match against teenaged emerging star Viktoria Azarenka after losing the first set by a break. This proved to be her last match of the year; and without being able to defend the points won at Shenzhen the previous November, she found her year-end ranking settling to 35.

2006 began disappointingly for the Chinese twenty-year-old. She lost her first-round ties at Sydney (a tough draw against Ana Ivanovic) and the Australian Open, then withdrew from subsequent tournaments with sickness. As of March 4th, she was yet to play again; and the loss of her previous year's ranking points at Sydney and the Australian Open had conspired to displace her to 60th in the world rankings, a moderate decline that cannot reasonably be expected to be irreversible, in view of the tremendous promise she has shown. She has since proven this promise in 2006, reaching the semi-finals of a Tier IV tournament in Prague, a final in a Tier III tournament in Strasbourg, third round showing at Wimbledon (including a victory over a top 20 player in Shahar Peer, 6-4 7-6) and finally a successful continuation of her Fed Cup career, winning both her ties against Indonesia.

Women's Tennis Association \| Top ten Asian female tennis players at the end of 2006
1. Shahar Pe'er (Israel) (20) \| 2. Na Li (China) (21) \| 3. Ai Sugiyama (Japan) (26) 4. Jie Zheng (China) (33) \| 5. Shuai Peng (China) (55) \| 6. Aiko Nakamura (Japan) (57) 7. Anna Smashnova (Israel) (63) \| 8. Sania Mirza (India) (55) 9. Tamarine Tanasugarn (Thailand) (70) \| 10. Yung-Jan Chan (Chinese Taipei) (74)

[edit] External links

WTA Tour profile for Peng Shuai

[edit] Performance timeline

Yellow stands for reaching top-8 (quarterfinalist to finalist), green stands for winning the title. Q means lost in the qualifications for the tournament.