Li Na (tennis)
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- This is a Chinese name; the family name is Li.[1]
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| Country |  China |
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| Residence | Wuhan, Hubei, China | |
| Date of birth | February 26, 1982 | |
| Place of birth | Wuhan, Hubei, China | |
| Height | 1.72 m (5 ft 71⁄2 in) | |
| Weight | 62 kg (140 lb/9.8 st) | |
| Turned pro | 1999 | |
| Plays | Right (two-handed backhand) | |
| Career prize money | $1,343,965 | |
| Singles | ||
| Career record: | 272-86 | |
| Career titles: | 2 WTA, 19 ITF titles | |
| Highest ranking: | No. 16 (January 15, 2007) | |
| Grand Slam results | ||
| Australian Open | 4r (2007) | |
| French Open | 3r (2006) | |
| Wimbledon | QF (2006) | |
| US Open | 4r (2006) | |
| Doubles | ||
| Career record: | 120-49 | |
| Career titles: | 2 WTA, 16 ITF titles | |
| Highest ranking: | No. 54 (August 28, 2006) | |
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Infobox last updated on: February 25, 2008. |
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Li Na (Chinese: 李娜, Lǐ Nà; born February 26, 1982), is a professional women's tennis player from the People's Republic of China. She was born in Wuhan, Hubei.
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[edit] Career summary
Between 1999 and 2004, Li won 20 women's singles titles: 19 ITF events and one—the first ever won by a Chinese woman—on the WTA Tour. In January 2008 she won her second WTA Tour title after a drought of over three and a quarter years.
She is noted in her playing style for quick reflexes and athleticism around the court and fast groundstrokes which she scatters unpredictably to all corners of the playing surface.
On June 19, 2006, Li became the first Chinese woman to be ranked within the WTA top 30 at No. 30. Two months later, on August 14, 2006, Li entered the top 20 for the first time at No. 20. Her highest ranking to date is No. 16.
Li also frequently enters doubles tournaments at events alongside singles, and has won two WTA doubles titles and 16 further ITF doubles events. Her early success in doubles came mostly with Ting Li; but more recently she has made a habit of forming temporary women's doubles partnerships with players with whom she has previously enjoyed a healthy rivalry through repeated head-to-head meetings in singles tournaments, notably Liu Nan-Nan, Nicole Pratt, Yan Zi and Jelena Janković, in addition to her countrywoman Peng Shuai.
Her career has been plagued by injuries that have interrupted her from playing for lengthy periods. She suffered a two-year hiatus from competition in her early 20s, lost several months at the height of the 2005 season to an ankle injury, and lost the second half of 2007 to a rib injury.
[edit] 1999-2003
Li turned professional in 1999, and that year won three of the very first four singles tournaments she entered on the ITF Circuit, two at Shenzhen and one at Westend, Belgium. She also won all seven of the first seven ITF doubles tournaments she entered.
In 2000, she won a total of 52 singles matches on the ITF circuit, more than any other player, notching another eight tournament titles including one at $50,000 level, two at $25,000, and an unbroken run of four successive $10,000 tournament wins in March and April.
Notable individual victories in the course of the year included wins over Flavia Pennetta, Emmanuelle Gagliardi, Maria Elena Camerin, Tamarine Tanasugarn and Yayuk Basuki.
In June, after Li's world ranking had risen to No. 136 on the strength of her ITF performances alone, she gained direct entry into her first WTA Tour event at Tashkent. Despite winning the first set to love, Li lost her first WTA singles match to Anna Zaporozhanova in three sets, 6–0 4–6 1-6; but she captured the women's doubles title at Tashkent with Li Ting against Zaporozhanova and Iroda Tulyaganova.
By the end of 2000, Li had won four WTA singles matches, in addition to increasing her cumulative ITF singles title count to eleven. That year, she also won seven more ITF doubles events, six of them with Li Ting.
Li was mostly absent from the tour in 2001. She won two further $25,000 ITF singles tournaments, defeating Roberta Vinci in the final at Ho Chi Min City, Vietnam, and Liu Nan-Nan in the final at Guangzhou in July, but then played only one further match for the rest of the year, leading her ranking to fall to 303 by the year's close.
She won her fifteenth career ITF doubles tournament at Hangzhou in March.
In 2002, she came through qualifying to win her first $75,000 singles tournament at Midland, USA in February, defeating Laura Granville, Tatiana Perebiynis and Mashona Washington en route to the title, the 14th of her career. But she then played only one more match (a loss to Zuzana Ondraskova in the $50,000 event at Dinan, France that April) before suffering a complete absence from the circuit for the next 25 months. Sources vary as to the causes of this absence, with some citing "health reasons," but others asserting that she decided to take a break from professional tennis to study at university.
[edit] 2004
In May 2004, however, she returned to the circuit unranked, and won her first twenty-six successive matches of the season to notch up three further $25,000 tournament wins and another $50,000 title, increasing her career singles title count to eighteen, only to have her winning streak finally snapped by Evgenia Linetskaya in the semi-final of the $50,000 Bronx tournament that August. But at least she won her sixteenth ITF doubles tournament at the same event, the seventeenth overall doubles title of her career.
That September, she lost in the final of a $25,000 tournament to compatriot Zheng Jie, before returning to the WTA circuit thanks to the award of a wildcard entry into qualifying at the Beijing. Here, she defeated Antonella Serra Zanetti, Marta Domachowska and Nicole Pratt before losing in the deciding-set tie-break after a very close second-round main-draw tussle against newly crowned US Open Champion Svetlana Kuznetsova, during which she held match points against Kuznetsova. The final score was 6–3 6–7 (6) 6–7 (3), and the Russian afterwards praised her Chinese opponent, stating that she had felt as though she was up against a top-five player.
The very next week, Li battled her way through qualifying into the WTA event at Guangzhou (a Tier IV event at the time, though since up-rated to Tier III), then beat Vera Dushevina, Jelena Janković, Kristina Brandi and Li Ting in the main draw to reach the final, where she overcame Martina Sucha 6–3 6–4 to claim her first WTA Tour title; and in so doing, she wrote her name into the history books as the first Chinese woman ever to win a WTA event.
On the back of the ranking points accrued through this result, on October 4, 2004 she broke into the WTA Top 100 for the first time.
To cap off her most successful year as a singles player yet, she competed in two $50,000 ITF tournaments at Shenzhen, winning the first outright to bring her the nineteenth ITF singles title and twentieth overall singles title of her career, but losing in the quarter-finals of the second to lower-ranked country-woman Yan Zi, 7–6 3–6 2–6. These results elevated Li Na to World No. 80 by the close of the year, a year in which she won fifty-one singles matches and lost just four.
[edit] 2005
2005 saw Li Na finally abandoning the ITF circuit to focus solely on WTA-level events.
She began the year in January with a second-round performance (losing to Nadia Petrova) at Gold Coast and a semi-final showing at Hobart (beating Amy Frazier and Marta Domachowska but losing to fellow Chinese player and eventual tournament champion Zheng Jie), then reached the third round at the Australian Open (where she defeated Laura Granville and Shinobu Asagoe before losing to Maria Sharapova 0–6 2–6).
In early February, she reached the quarter-final at Hyderabad (losing to Russian Maria Kirilenko). But after qualifying for Doha with wins over Ekaterina Bychkova and Virginia Ruano Pascual she was narrowly beaten 5–7 6–3 5–7 by Patty Schnyder in the first round of the main draw. After a victory for the Chinese player over Ai Sugiyama in the first round at Dubai the following week, it was Schnyder once again who stopped her from reaching the latter stages of the event, this time winning 6–3 7–6.
After taking a month off from competition, Li returned at Estoril in late April, defeating Stephanie Cohen-Aloro, Nicole Pratt, Dally Randriantefy and Dinara Safina (whom she vanquished 6–1 6–1) to reach her second WTA Tour final, only to be denied the title by Czech qualifier Lucie Safarova, who prevailed in a close three-set match 7–6(4) 4–6 3–6.
At Rabat in May, Li reached the semi-final stage, but further success proved ultimately elusive for her, as she retired hurt with a right ankle sprain from her clash against Zheng Jie with the score level at 3–3. Reaching this semi-final propelled her to a career-high world ranking of 33, but the injury she had sustained was destined to keep her out of action for the next three months.
On her return at Los Angeles in August, she fell in the first round to Anna Chakvetadze of Russia. The following week, however, at the Canadian Open, she once more beat Jelena Janković, and also defeated Maria Vento-Kabchi, before suffering her second loss of the year to Nadia Petrova at the quarter-final stage.
It was Lindsay Davenport who proved her undoing in her next two tournaments, beating her 6–4 6–4 in the first round of the US Open and 6–2 6–2 at the semi-final stage in Bali in September, but not before Li Na had avenged her previous year's defeat by Yan Zi in the second round of the same tournament, in addition to recording victories over Nuria Llagostera Vives and Alyona Bondarenko.
The following week, another highly-ranked American player, Jill Craybas, narrowly defeated Li Na in a close three-set first round match at Beijing.
On September 26, Li Na commenced her defence of her Guangzhou title; but she was prevented from completing it in the quarter-finals by eventual champion Yan Zi, who thereby edged out in front in their head-to-head record once again. This second loss in three head-to-heads against Yan proved to be Li's last match of 2005; and in her absence from the Shenzhen $50,000 tournaments where she had notched up some ranking points late the previous year, she found herself slipping further in the rankings from the high-point of 33 that she had reached in the Spring before her injury break to 56 at the year's close.
[edit] 2006
With nearly all her remaining ranking points to defend concentrated in a little over the first four months of the year, Li Na began the year faced with the challenge of equalling her strong results from the early part of 2005 in order to maintain her position in the middle reaches of the WTA Top 100.
In January, the 23-year-old Chinese entered the Australian Open and was drawn to play Serena Williams in the first round. She took the match to a deciding set by whitewashing Williams in the second-set tie-break, but failed to sustain that momentum in the final set, finally yielding the match 3–6 7–6 (7–0) 1–6 to the American.
Other early-round draws against high-ranked players towards the beginning of 2006 conspired with her recent first-round tie against Serena Williams at the Australian Open to take a heavy toll on Li's singles ranking, bringing it slipping down to No. 71 by the end of February.
At Gold Coast, she defeated Roberta Vinci in the first round only to lose to Top-20 player Flavia Pennetta in Round Two. Although she avenged this defeat in the first round at Sydney the very next week, ousting the Italian 6–4 6–1, she lost heavily to Kim Clijsters in the second round.
An easier draw on paper faced her at Pattaya in early February, but it was not to be a good week for Li, as she slumped to a three-set defeat by Canadian qualifier Aleksandra Wozniak in the first round.
A second successive first-round defeat, this time to the opposition of Daniela Hantuchova, followed in Dubai, although the score-line of 6–3 4–6 6–7 demonstrated that the match was extremely close despite the gulf of more than fifty places between the two players' rankings.
A repeat spar with Hantuchova in the second round at the Qatar Total Open in Doha the following week saw the Slovak this time taking a commanding lead, 6–4, 5-1; but Li saved several match points and broke back twice en route to a second-set tie-break, which she won, before running away with the third set 6–1. Although Li's next opponent in this tournament Nadia Petrova, who was destined to win the entire tournament, had the upper hand for the third time in three head-to-head contests, narrowly prevailing 6–4 6–4, the fact of Li Na reaching the quarter-final stage at Doha, after earlier beating Vera Zvonareva, spared her a further decline in her world ranking and brought it back up slightly to No. 70.
At Indian Wells in March, she started with a comfortable 6–1 6–3 win over former Top-40 player Anne Kremer of Luxembourg (despite ceding one break of service), then defeated Czech World No. 39 Iveta Benesova by the one-sided scoreline of 6–1 6–0 in Round Two. She was 6–2 5–1 up against Vania King in Round Three before the American wildcard won three successive games, forcing Li to close out the closely-tied second set 6–4, having lost her own serve twice during the set. In the fourth round, she played Russian World No. 8 Elena Dementieva for the first time, and found herself struggling to hold her own service throughout the match, as she was broken five times while breaking Dementieva's serve just twice, and was ultimately defeated 6–3 6–2, although overall she won 50 points against the Russian's 63. Still, she earned 45 ranking points from the tournament; and with none to defend from the previous March, this assured her of a rise of ten places back up to World No. 60.
The Miami draw saw her scheduled to be pitted in the second round against Maria Sharapova, the winner at Indian Wells, who in their only previous meeting had crushed her for the loss of just two games at the Australian Open in 2005. In Round One, Li easily overcame Akiko Morigami 6–1 6–2, allowing her to take home 19 ranking points. But against the Russian No. 1 she went down 2–6 4–6. In the second set, she broke Sharapova's service twice, but ultimately lost her own three times, and thus the match.
At Estoril in May, Li defended her previous year's final-round performance with a solid run of straight-sets victories, including wins over Gisela Dulko and clay-court specialist Emilie Loit, only to retire hurt at one-set all during a close-fought final against her compatriot Zheng Jie, with the score at 7–6 (5) 5–7.
With her previous year's points from Rabat cut from under her feet as the tournament was scheduled several weeks later this year and clashed with a higher-level event in which she chose to participate instead, Li Na found herself ranked at No. 61, down five places on the beginning of the year, as the defence of her results in early 2005 came to its end.
Her second injury-related retirement in two successive meetings against Zheng would not prove to prevent Li from continuing to compete over the remainder of the Spring, a period in which she had no ranking points to defend at all, and which therefore presented her with a ready opportunity to advance back upwards in the rankings.
She returned with a career-best performance at Tier I events the very next week by reaching the semi-final at Berlin. On the way there, she achieved her first ever victory over a current Top-10-ranked player as she ousted Patty Schnyder for the first time in their three head-to-head meetings, 2–6 7–6 7–6, at the quarter-final stage. But this match left her with a muscle sprain, and she subsequently suffered an uncharacteristically easy loss to Nadia Petrova in the semi-final, 1–6 0–6. Nonetheless, her performance at this high-level tournament propelled her ranking back up inside the WTA Top 40 for the first time that year, leaving her ranked #39, and also elevated her up inside the Top 20 in the 2006 WTA race to the championships.
At Strasbourg in late May, she scored a second-round victory over Top-30 player Nathalie Dechy of France, 6–3 7-6; but although she then took an early lead against rival-turned-doubles-partner Jelena Janković in Round Three, she failed to sustain it, losing to Janković for the first time in three career meetings. Her ranking improved just one place to 38th.
In her first ever appearance at Roland Garros, she toughed out hard-fought victories against perennial campaigner Amy Frazier and young Russian Anna Chakvetadze to earn herself a third round spot, then put up an ultimatey unsuccessful fight against eventual finalist Svetlana Kuznetsova, going down by a final scoreline of 3–6 6–7. She emerged from the tournament with a personal best WTA ranking of 32, as several players previously ranked comfortably above her failed to adequately defend their ranking points from the previous year.
Joining the WTA grass court season for the first time at the DFS Classic tournament at Birmingham in June, she managed another third-round finish with wins over Mashona Washington and grass-court specialist Eleni Daniilidou, both in straight sets, then lost for the third time in three meetings to Maria Sharapova, this time by a scoreline of 2–6 4–6. But her third consecutive third-round performance in tournaments where she had no ranking points to defend from the previous year was enough to lift her ranking to No. 30, which was at that time the highest ever ranking achieved by a Chinese woman.
At the same event, partnering Jelena Janković, she notched up her second career WTA doubles title, almost exactly six years on from her first at Tashkent.
An early retirement against Alona Bondarenko in the first round of the Ondina Open at Hertogenbosch the following week curtailed her final competitive preparations for her debut appearance at Wimbledon. But with an entry ranking of 30th, she found herself seeded 27th after some withdrawals, and thus achieved another first for her country in becoming the first Chinese woman ever to be seeded for entry into a Grand Slam tournament.
Taking advantage of her hard-earned Wimbledon seeding, she cruised to the third round with comfortable straight-sets victories over respected grass-court players Virginie Razzano and recent Birmingham semi-finalist Meilen Tu to set up her second consecutive third-round Grand Slam tie against Svetlana Kuznetsova.
After two close defeats in two career head-to-heads against Kuznetsova, Li Na finally scored her first victory over the 5th-seeded Russian World No. 6 almost two years after squandering match points against her in their first encounter. To seal this breakthrough win, which was also her second career victory over a current Top-10-ranked player, Li had to fight back from a set down, but ultimately vanquished the Russian 3–6 6–2 6–3, so becoming the second Chinese player to reach the fourth round (last 16) at a Grand Slam tournament (the first having been Jie Zheng at the 2004 French Open).
She then went on to defeat 10th-seeded Czech player Nicole Vaidišová 4–6 6–1 6–3 in the fourth round, to reach her first Grand Slam quarter-final, surpassing Zheng's achievement by becoming the first Chinese player ever to reach any Grand Slam quarter-final. With 174 ranking points to her credit from this performance, and none to defend, Li rose to a new career high WTA ranking of 20 following the tournament, even though she ultimately lost her quarter-final match against Kim Clijsters in two close sets, 4–6, 5–7, despite serving for the second set at 5–2.
At the US Open later that summer, she reached the fourth round, beating Mary Pierce 4–6 6–0 6–0, before losing to the eventual champion Maria Sharapova, 4–6 2–6.
[edit] 2007
Li Na started the year by participating a Tier III event in Gold Coast, Australia where she reached the second round. The week after, she competed in Sydney (Medibank International). She defeated Francesca Schiavone in the first round, Elena Dementieva in the second saving five match points, and Katarina Srebotnik in the quarterfinal. Then, she made it to the semifinals, losing a tough match to Kim Clijsters 1–6, 6–1, 7–5, however, she rose to a career high of No.16 afterwards.
Li Na followed her strong showing at the Medibank tournament with an equally strong showing at the 2007 Australian Open, where she advanced to the fourth round. Seeded 19th, Li dispatched Elena Bovina and Lourdes Dominguez Lino in straight sets through the first two rounds leading to a matchup with number 9 Dinara Safina. The match was postponed due to rain, but Li handedly beat Safina 6–2, 6–2 to advance to the fourth round to play Swiss star, number 6 Martina Hingis. Due to the rain delay and the fact that Hingis played on Rod Laver Arena, a roofed court, on the originally scheduled day, Hingis had an extra day of rest. The match the previous day seemed to have no effect as Li took the first set from Hingis; however, Na faded as the match went on and lost 4–6, 6–3, 6–0, committing 69 unforced errors. Despite the loss, the tournament was a success for Na, as it marked the third straight time in a slam that she advanced to the fourth round or later.
At the Tier I Pan Pacific Open in Tokyo, Japan, Li advanced to the second round, defeating Lilia Osterloh 6–3, 6–2, before losing to Sam Stosur 6–2, 6–4, converting zero of 11 break points.
At the important Pacific Life Open in Indian Wells, California, Li made a strong showing, advancing to the semifinals. She lost to Daniela Hantuchová in the semifinal 7–5, 4–6, 6–1. She continued her good form at the Miami Masters, losing just three games in her first two matches against Tamira Paszek and Katarina Srebotnik, before stunning fourth-seeded Kim Clijsters 4–6, 6–4, 6–2. She then lost in the quarter-finals to Anna Chakvetadze 4–6, 7–5, 6–2.
She then moved onto the green clay of Amelia Island, where she suffered a shock second round exit after receiving a first round bye to former top twenty player Karolina Sprem in straight sets 6–3, 6–3. At the Family Circle Cup held in Charleston, South Carolina, she fell in the third round to Anabel Medina Garrigues 6–4, 7–5.
After losing in a grass tune-up event in Birmingham Li has pulled out of every tournament she was to play in the summer including Wimbledon and the US Open citing a rib injury.
[edit] 2008
Li Na had not played a professional match in half a year and had resultantly slipped to 29th in the WTA rankings when she returned from her rib injury in January 2008 to compete at the 2008 Mondial Australian Women's Hardcourts in Gold Coast, Australia. In the first round, she narrowly defeated seventh seed Sybille Bammer 6–4, 4–6, 6–4. After a comfortable second round victory over wildcard Monique Adamczak, she was drawn to meet the top seed Nicole Vaidišová in the quarterfinals. Li won their encounter in straight sets, 6–3, 6–3, advancing to the semifinals where she edged past Patty Schnyder 3–6 6–3 7–5.[2] In the final, she narrowly prevailed against Victoria Azarenka 4–6 6–3 6–4 to score her first singles title since Ghangzhou in 2004 and the second WTA singles title in her overall career.
Despite rising back up to World No. 24 following this victory, she then withdrew from the 2008 Medibank International in Syndey after suffering a right knee injury. Her failure to defend her previous year's semi-final performance at this event cost her 125 ranking points, which dipped her ranking back down to No. 30 in the rankings list for the week beginning 14th January.
Going in to the 2008 Australian Open, she had a further 140 ranking points to defend from her fourth round performance in 2007. Faced with a relatively lenient draw in the early rounds, she survived a close three-set tussle with Séverine Brémond in the first round before surpassing Maria Elena Camerin in straight sets in round two. A revitalised Marta Domachowska (who last year slipped down from the Top 100 to the bottom of the Top 200 before a late-season winning streak propelled her suddenly back up to within the Top 150) remained between her and the defence of her ranking points, and although Li Na won the first set convincingly 6–2, she faltered thereafter and finally ceded the match to her Polish opponent by a single break of serve in the closely fought deciding set.
Having slipped three places to World No. 33 by the time she entered the Tier II tournament at Antwerp in early February, she nonetheless progressed to the semi-finals with back-to-back straight-sets wins over Russian veteran Elena Likhovtseva (6–1 6–1), Slovak World No. 45 Dominika Cibulkova (6–4, 6–4) and on-form Swedish World No. 66 Sofia Arvidsson (7–5 6–4). However, she came unstuck in the semi-finals against World No. 47 Karin Knapp despite having taken an early lead with a break of service in the first set, ultimately ceding the match to her Italian opponent 4–6, 6–7(5). This tournament brought her back up within the Top 30 at World No. 29.
The very next week in the Tier I 2008 Qatar Total Open, Li met Likhovtseva again in the first round, and this time, after taking the first set comfortably, was challenged to a much tougher battle, but eventually won, 6–1, 0–6, 6–4. In Round Two, she scored her second straight-sets victory in four career head-to-heads against Russian World No. 6 Anna Chakvetadze (whom she had last beaten at the French Open in 2005), saving a set point in the first set tie-break before recovering to win 7–6(7), 6–4. In the third round, she enjoyed a more comfortable victory over Israeli World No. 17 Shahar Pe'er, recovering from a 1–3 deficit in the second set to win 6–1, 6–3. In the quarter-finals, she met her old rival and friend World No. 4 Jelena Janković, coming into the match with a winning 3:1 head-to-head record to her credit against the Serbian player. By defeating Janković 6–3, 6–4, she extended this record to 4:1 and moved into the semi-finals, where she played Vera Zvonareva of Russia, against whom she had won both of her previous encounters. Despite taking the first set 6–3, Li lost the second by the same scoreline; and although she was 3–2 up in the final set, she then ceded four successive games to her opponent to lose the match.
Her ranking having risen back to No. 23 on the strength of this performance, she was prevented from consolidating on this recovery by suffering a right knee injury which forced her to pull out of her scheduled entries into both the Tier II event at Bangalore in early March and the Tier I tournament at Indian Wells in the middle of the month. With 210 ranking points undefended from her semi-final performance at Indian Wells in 2007, her ranking is calculated to slip back down to the bottom end of the top 30 in the week beginning March 24th 2008.
[edit] WTA Finals (6 )
[edit] Singles (4)
[edit] Won (2)
[edit] Runner Up (2)
[edit] Doubles (2)[edit] Won (2)
[edit] ITF Circuit (35)
[edit] Singles Performance TimelineTo prevent confusion and double counting, information in this table is updated only once a tournament or the player's participation in the tournament has concluded. This table is current through the 2007 French Open in Paris, which will end on June 8, 2007.
Green background for wins. Yellow background for top-8 (quarter finals up to finalist).
[edit] References
[edit] External links
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