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{{chinese-name|[[Li (李)]]}}
{{stack begin}}
{{Infobox tennis biography
|name = Li Na</br><small>李娜</small>
|image= Li Na Photo by Sascha Grabow.jpg
|caption = Li Na at the 2010 Stuttgart Porsche Cup
|country = {{CHN}}
|residence = [[Wuhan]], [[Hubei]], China
|birth_date = {{birth date and age|mf=yes|1982|2|26}}
|birth_place = Wuhan, Hubei, China
|height = {{height|m=1.72}}
|weight = {{convert|65|kg|lb st|abbr=on}}
|turnedpro = 1999
|plays = Right handed (two-handed backhand)
|careerprizemoney = $6,586,058
|singlesrecord = 388–148
|singlestitles = 5 WTA, 19 ITF
|highestsinglesranking = No. 4 (June 6, 2011)
|currentsinglesranking = No. 5 (October 24, 2011)
|AustralianOpenresult = F ([[2011 Australian Open – Women's Singles|2011]])
|FrenchOpenresult = '''W''' ([[2011 French Open - Women's Singles|2011]])
|Wimbledonresult = QF ([[2006 Wimbledon Championships – Women's Singles|2006]], [[2010 Wimbledon Championships – Women's Singles|2010]])
|USOpenresult = QF ([[2009 US Open – Women's Singles|2009]])
|doublesrecord = 120–49
|doublestitles = 2 WTA, 16 ITF
|highestdoublesranking = No. 54 (August 28, 2006)
|grandslamsdoublesresults = yes
|AustralianOpenDoublesresult = 2R (2006, 2007)
|FrenchOpenDoublesresult = 2R (2006, 2007)
|WimbledonDoublesresult = 2R (2006)
|USOpenDoublesresult = 3R (2005)
|updated = October 10, 2011
}}
{{MedalTableTop}}
{{MedalCountry | {{CHN}} }}
{{MedalSport | Women's [[Tennis]]}}
{{MedalCompetition|[[Universiade]]}}
{{MedalGold | [[2001 Summer Universiade|2001 Beijing]]|[[Tennis at the 2001 Summer Universiade|Singles]]}}
{{MedalGold| 2001 Beijing|Doubles}}
{{MedalGold| 2001 Beijing|Mixed Doubles}}
{{MedalCompetition|[[Asian Games]]}}
{{MedalGold | [[2010 Asian Games|2010 Guangzhou]]|[[Tennis at the 2010 Asian Games – Women's Team|Team]]}}
{{MedalBronze | [[2006 Asian Games|2006 Doha]]|[[Tennis at the 2006 Asian Games – Women's singles|Singles]]}}
{{MedalBottom}}
{{Infobox Chinese
|title=Li Na
|collapse=yes
|c=李娜
|p=Lǐ Nà
|w=li<sup>3</sup> na<sup>4</sup>
|mi= {{IPAc-cmn|l|i|3|n|a|4}}
}}
{{stack end}}
'''Li Na''' ({{zh|c=李娜|p=Lǐ Nà}}<ref group="note">The official Chinese naming system states that the family name, Li (李), goes first before the equivalent of a first name in some other nations. Her name off court in China is Li Na. When listed on the [http://www.sonyericssonwtatour.com WTA Tour website], she is known as Na Li. However, in the match, the commentators call her Li Na, and when her full name is listed in text on court, it is also written as Li Na.</ref>; born February 26, 1982) is a [[Mainland China|Chinese]] professional [[tennis]] player. Li has won 5 [[Women's Tennis Association|WTA]] and 19 [[International Tennis Federation|ITF]] singles titles. Li won the [[2011 French Open]] singles title, making her the first Asian country representative to win a [[Grand Slam (tennis)|Grand Slam]] in singles. With her performance at the [[2011 Australian Open]], she became the first player from an Asian country to appear in a Grand Slam singles final.<ref group="note" name="asian">The words "Asian" mentioned here mean "from an [[List of sovereign states and dependent territories in Asia|Asian country]]", rather than "born in Asia" or "of Asian descent".</ref>

==Off the court==
Li Na was born on February 26, 1982, in [[Wuhan]], Hubei, China. Her father Li Shengpeng (李盛鹏) was a professional badminton player and later worked as a sales rep for a Wuhan based company. He died from a rare cardiovascular disease when Li Na was 14.<ref name="qnb0">{{cite news| url=http://sports.163.com/11/0131/09/6RNE178U00051CDG.html | work=青年报 | title=她最爱吃妈妈煮的面 | date=Jan 31, 2011 | accessdate=Jun 3, 2011}}</ref>

At age 6, Li Na started playing [[badminton]], following her father's footsteps. Just before she turned eight, Li made the transition from badminton to tennis when she and her parents were convinced by coach Xia Xiyao of the Wuhan youth tennis club that this would be the right career move for her.<ref name="nytimes0909">{{cite news| url=http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/08/sports/tennis/08lina.html | work=The New York Times | title=China's Li Na Finds a Taste of Home in New York | first=John | last=Branch | date=September 8, 2009 | accessdate=May 7, 2010}}</ref> Li joined China's National Tennis Team in 1997 and turned pro in 1999.

At the end of 2002, Li left the national tennis team to study part-time at [[Huazhong University of Science and Technology]], where she completed her bachelor's degree in journalism in 2009. The Chinese media cited various reasons for this. Some reported that the relationship between her and her teammate, future husband Jiang Shan (姜山), was opposed by the national team's management,<ref name="yahoochina0">{{cite news| url=http://sports.cn.yahoo.com/09-10-/324/2au8z.html | work=Yahoo China | title=李娜—09中国网球公开赛参赛选手简介 | date=Oct 2, 2009 | accessdate=Jun 3, 2011}}</ref> some reported that her coach Yu Liqiao (余丽桥) was too strict and demanding,<ref name="whwb0">{{cite news| url=http://sports.titan24.com/tennis/2010-10-10/86508.html | work=武汉晚报 | title=李娜自曝当年退役缘由 称:余丽桥不懂得表扬队员 | date=Oct 10, 2010 | accessdate=Jun 3, 2011}}</ref> while other reports claimed that her request for a personal coach did not go through.<ref name="163com0">{{cite news| url=http://sports.163.com/11/0129/20/6RJH9E6400051CDG.html | work=[[163.com]] | title=个性李娜单飞后屡获成功 映射举国体制之尴尬 | date=Jan 29, 2011 | accessdate=Jun 3, 2011}}</ref>

However, Li returned to the national team in 2004. Jiang Shan married Li and became her personal coach in 2006. Li quit the national team<ref name="ft0">{{cite news| url=http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5ddeef38-2ae9-11e0-a2f3-00144feab49a.html | work=[[Financial Times]] | title=Li Na serves an ace by flying solo | date=Jan 28, 2011 | accessdate=Jun 3, 2011}}</ref> as well as the state-run sports system in 2008 under an experimental reform policy for tennis players. This change was called "Fly Alone" (单飞) by Chinese media.<ref name="ft1">{{cite news| url=http://www.ftchinese.com/story/001036772 | work=Financial Times Chinese | title=分析:李娜单飞的意义 | date=Jan 28, 2011 | accessdate=Jun 6, 2011}}</ref> As a result Li had the freedom to pick her own coaching staff and she could keep more of her winnings.<ref>[http://sports.espn.go.com/sports/tennis/french11/news/story?id=6625484 Li Na tops Francesca Schiavone for title]. ESPN. June 4, 2011. Accessed 2011-06-06.</ref> Only 8 to 12 percent of her winnings go to the government as opposed to 65 percent previously.<ref>[http://www.cnn.com/2011/SPORT/tennis/06/03/china.li.na/ Cnn.com: "Li Na: China's tennis rebel is people's idol" 4 June 2011]</ref>

==Career==
{{BLP sources section|date=June 2011}}
{{Over detailed|section=yes|date=June 2011}}
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.

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 [[Li Ting (tennis)|Li Ting]] (unrelated); 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]], [[Jelena Janković]], and [[Peng Shuai]].

Her career has been plagued by injuries and other troubles that have prevented 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.

===1999–2002===
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 [[Westende]], Belgium. She also won all of her 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, 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, this brought her cumulative ITF singles title count up 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 no. 303 by the year's close.

She won her 15th 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 Ondrášková]] in the $50,000 event at Dinan, France that April), followed by a lengthy absence from the circuit for the next 25 months.

Sources vary as to the causes of this absence, the Chinese media mostly cited the conflict between her and the China's National Tennis Team's administration and coaching staff.<ref name="yahoochina0" /><ref name="whwb0" /><ref name="163com0" /> Some claimed that she just wanted a break from professional tennis so she could concentrate on her studies at the university.

===2004===
In May 2004, she returned to the circuit unranked, and won 26 successive matches to notch three further $25,000 tournament wins and another $50,000 title, increasing her career singles title count to 18, only to have her winning streak finally snapped by [[Evgenia Linetskaya]] in the semifinal of the $50,000 Bronx tournament that August. However, she won her 16th ITF doubles tournament at the same event, the 17th 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 a wildcard entry into qualifying at the [[China Open (tennis)|Beijing]]. There, 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 scores were 6–3, 6–7, 6–7, and the Russian afterwards praised her Chinese opponent, stating that she had felt as though she was up against a top-5 player.

The very next week, Li battled her way through qualifying into the WTA event at [[Guangzhou International Women's Open|Guangzhou]] (a Tier IV event at the time, though since up-graded to Tier III), then beat [[Vera Dushevina]], [[Jelena Janković]], [[Kristina Brandi]], and [[Li Ting (tennis)|Li Ting]] in the main draw to reach the final, where she overcame [[Martina Suchá]], 6–3, 6–4, to claim her first WTA Tour title. In so doing, she became the first Chinese woman 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 19th ITF singles title and 20th overall singles title of her career, but losing in the quarterfinals 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 51 singles matches and lost just four.

===2005===
2005 saw Li 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 semifinal 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 quarterfinals at Hyderabad (losing to Russian [[Maria Kirilenko]]). 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 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 3-6, 6-7.

After taking a month off from competition, Li returned at Estoril in late April, defeating [[Stéphanie 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 Šafářová]], who prevailed in a close three-set match, 7–6, 4–6, 3–6.

At Rabat in May, Li reached the semifinal stage, but further success proved ultimately elusive for her. With the score leveled at 3–3,she retired due to a right ankle sprain while clashing with [[Zheng Jie]]. Reaching this semifinal propelled her to a career-high world ranking of no. 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 [[María Vento-Kabchi]], before suffering her second loss of the year to [[Nadia Petrova]] at the quarterfinal stage.

It was [[Lindsay Davenport]] who proved her undoing in her next two tournaments, beating her 4-6, 4-6, in the first round of the [[US Open (tennis)|US Open]], and 2-6, 2-6, at the semifinal 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 [[Alona 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 quarterfinals 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 no. 33 that she had reached in the spring before her injury break, to no. 56 at the year's close.

===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.

Early-round draws against high-ranked players towards the beginning of 2006 took a heavy toll on Li's singles ranking, bringing it slipping down to no. 71 by the end of February.

She returned with a career-best performance at Tier I events by reaching the semifinal at Berlin. On the way there, she achieved her first victory over a current top-10-ranked player as she ousted [[Patty Schnyder]] for the first time at the quarterfinal stage. However, this match left her with a muscle sprain, and she lost to [[Nadia Petrova]] in the semifinal. Nonetheless, her performance at this high-level tournament saw her ranked no. 39.

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]]. Her ranking following this tournament was 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 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 [[The Championships, Wimbledon|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.

At [[The Championships, Wimbledon|Wimbledon]], she reached the fourth round with comfortable straight-sets wins over respected grass-court players [[Virginie Razzano]] and recent [[Birmingham]] semifinalist [[Meilen Tu]], followed by victory against 10th seeded [[Svetlana Kuznetsova]], resulting in her being the first Chinese player ever to reach any Grand Slam quarterfinal. Li rose to a new career high WTA ranking of no. 20 following the tournament, even though she ultimately lost her quarterfinal match against [[Kim Clijsters]] in two close sets.

She reached the quarterfinals at Stockholm, and the fourth round at the US Open, where she was beaten by [[Maria Sharapova]], 4-6, 2-6. She then reached the quarterfinals at the China Open, where she was beaten by [[Svetlana Kuznetsova]], and in Guangzhou.

===2007===
[[File:Li Na 2008.jpg|thumb|right|upright|Li Na at 2008 Fortis Championships Luxembourg]]
Li Na started the year by participating a Tier III event in [[Gold Coast, Queensland|Gold Coast]], Australia, where she reached the second round. The next week, she competed in Sydney. 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]], 6-1, 1-6, 5-7. 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 Domínguez Lino]] in straight sets through the first two rounds, leading to a matchup with no. 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, no. 6 [[Martina Hingis]]. Due to a 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, 6-4, 3-6, 0-6, committing 69 unforced errors. Despite the loss, the tournament was a success for Na, as it marked the third straight time in a Grand Slam that she advanced at least to the fourth round.

At the Tier I [[Toray Pan Pacific Open|Pan Pacific Open]] in Tokyo, Japan, Li advanced to the second round, defeating [[Lilia Osterloh]], 6–3, 6–2, before losing to [[Samantha Stosur]], 2-6, 4-6, converting 0 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, 5-7,6-4, 1-6. 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 quarterfinals to [[Anna Chakvetadze]], 6-4, 5-7, 2-6.

She then moved onto the green clay of [[Bausch & Lomb Championships|Amelia Island]], where she suffered a shock second-round exit after receiving a first round bye to former top-20 player [[Karolina Šprem]] in straight sets, 3-6, 3-6. At the [[Family Circle Cup]] held in [[Charleston, South Carolina]], she fell in the third round to [[Anabel Medina Garrigues]], 4-6, 5-7.

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.

===2008===
[[File:Li na wim08 1.JPG|right|thumb|right|upright|Li Na at the [[2008 Wimbledon Championships]].]]
Li Na had not played a professional match in half a year and had resultantly slipped to no. 29 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, Queensland|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 [[wild card (sports)#Professional Tennis|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.<ref name="Safina's Golden Reign Comes To An End">{{cite news | author = [[Women's Tennis Association]] | title = Safina's Golden Reign Comes To An End | url = http://www.sonyericssonwtatour.com/1/newsroom/stories/?ContentID=1938 | date = 2008-01-03 | accessdate = 2008-01-03 | publisher = Women's Tennis Association }}</ref>
In the final, she narrowly prevailed against [[Victoria Azarenka]], 4–6, 6–3, 6–4, to score her first singles title since Guangzhou 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 Sydney, after suffering a right knee injury. Her failure to defend her previous year's semifinal performance at this event cost her 125 ranking points, which dipped her ranking back down to no. 30 for the week beginning 14 January.

Going into 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]] 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 semifinals with back-to-back straight-sets wins over Russian veteran [[Elena Likhovtseva]], 6–1, 6–1, Slovak world no. 45 [[Dominika Cibulková]], 6–4, 6–4 and on-form Swedish world no. 66 [[Sofia Arvidsson]], 7–5, 6–4. However, she came unstuck in the semifinals 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. This tournament brought her back up within the top 30 at world no. 29.

The 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 2, 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, 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 quarterfinals, 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 semifinals, where she played [[Vera Zvonareva]], 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 Masters|Indian Wells]] in the middle of the month. She returned to action at the [[International Women's Open]] in Eastbourne, winning one round before losing to [[Nadia Petrova]]. She then contested Wimbledon, defeating [[Anastasia Rodionova]], 3–6, 6–0, 6–1, before losing 2-6, 4-6 to [[Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova]].

At the [[Beijing Olympics]], following early-round victories against world no. 3 [[Svetlana Kuznetsova]], [[Ayumi Morita]], and [[Kaia Kanepi]], she went on to defeat one of the favourites, [[Venus Williams]], in the quarterfinals. Li was trailing 1–4 in the first set, but then managed to strengthen her game to win in straight sets. Li lost her semifinal match to sixth seed [[Dinara Safina]], 6-7, 5-7, and was then defeated in the bronze final by [[Vera Zvonareva]]. At the following US Open, Li was defeated by the Beijing Olympics gold medalist [[Elena Dementieva]] in the fourth round.

In the 2008 [[Porsche Tennis Grand Prix|Porsche Grand Prix]], the unseeded Li defeated no. 1 ranked [[Serena Williams]] in the second-round, 0–6, 6–1, 6–4. Li thus became only the second Chinese player to defeat a world no. 1 player, following [[Zheng Jie]]'s victory over [[Ana Ivanović]] at [[2008 Wimbledon Championships|Wimbledon]] in 2008.

===2009===
[[File:Li Na at the 2009 US Open 01.jpg|thumb|Li Na at the 2009 US Open]]
Li withdrew from both the inaugural [[Brisbane International]], where she was defending champion (as she won the title at Gold Coast in 2008), and the [[Australian Open 2009|Australian Open]] because of a right-knee injury. She made her comeback at the [[2009 Open GDF Suez|Paris Open]]. In the first round, she beat [[Ágnes Szávay]], 7–6, 6–2. In the second round, she lost to second-seeded [[Jelena Janković]], 0-6, 6-3, 2-6.

In the first round of the [[2009 Dubai Tennis Championships - Women's Singles|Barclays Dubai Tennis Championships]], Li lost to Russian [[Elena Vesnina]], 6-1, 4-6, 4-6.

Unseeded at the [[2009 Monterrey Open|Monterrey Open]], she defeated world no. 10 and top seed [[Agnieszka Radwańska]] in a first round match that lasted over two hours, 7–6, 4–6, 6–0. In the second round, she beat [[Petra Cetkovská]], 6–3, 6–4. She advanced to the semifinals after defeating [[Lucie Šafářová]], 6–3, 7–6. Li then moved into her fifth career tour final, after beating sixth-seeded [[Iveta Benešová]], 6–3, 6–3. However, Li lost to second-seeded [[Marion Bartoli]] in the final in straight sets.

Li then played in the Premier event at Indian Wells, where she defeated [[Tamarine Tanasugarn]], [[Patty Schnyder]], and [[Amélie Mauresmo]], all in straight sets, to advance to the fourth round, where she lost to eventual champion [[Vera Zvonareva]], 4–6, 4–6.

She then reached the quarterfinals of the Premier event in Miami, where she beat qualifier [[Urszula Radwańska]] in the first round and upset 29th seed [[Aleksandra Wozniak]] to reach the third round, where she caused a big upset by defeating the previous week's Indian Wells champion, 6th-seeded [[Vera Zvonareva]] in three sets, 6–4, 3–6, 6–2. This victory was particularly important for Li, as she had been beaten by Zvonareva the week before at Indian Wells. She then faced unseeded Russian [[Ekaterina Makarova]] in the fourth round and beat her in three sets to set up a quarterfinal match with the top seed and world no. 1 [[Serena Williams]], a match which she lost in a tight three-setter, 6–4, 6–7, 2–6. Because of her strong performance, her ranking went up to world no. 29 from world no. 40.

Her next event was the second Grand Slam of the year, the French Open in Paris. As the 25th seed, she won her first round 6–4, 6–2 against Polish [[Marta Domachowska]]. She then defeated [[Timea Bacsinszky]] and [[Olga Govortsova]]. She then lost to unseeded, former world no. 1 [[Maria Sharapova]] in the fourth round, 4–6, 6–0, 4–6. After this impressive result, she jumped six rankings up to no. 20.

She started her grass-court season as the fourth seed at the [[2009 AEGON Classic - Singles|AEGON Classic]] in [[Birmingham]]. She advanced to the final with a 6–4, 6–4 win over [[Maria Sharapova]] in the semifinals. However, Na was defeated by [[Magdaléna Rybáriková]], 0–6, 6–7, in the final.

Na was seeded 19th at the [[2009 Wimbledon Championships]]. She defeated [[Galina Voskoboeva]] in the first round and [[Olga Govortsova]] in the second round, but lost to no. 11 [[Agnieszka Radwańska]] in the third round.

At the [[2009 Bank of the West Classic]], she lost to [[Serena Williams]] in the first round, and at the [[2009 LA Women's Tennis Championships|2009 LA Women's Tennis Championships p/b Herbalife]], she withdrew due to injury during her match with [[Urszula Radwańska]] of Poland.

Seeded 18th at the [[2009 US Open (tennis)|2009 US Open]], she reached her first [[US Open (tennis)|US Open]] quarterfinals, where she lost to [[Kim Clijsters]]. En route to the quarterfinals, she defeated [[Ioana Raluca Olaru]], [[Michelle Larcher de Brito]], [[Maria Kirilenko]], and [[Francesca Schiavone]] all in straight sets.

Seeded 15th at the [[Toray Pan Pacific Open]], Li Na won her opening match against [[Alizé Cornet]], 6–4, 6–0. She then defeated [[Vera Dushevina]], 7–5, 6–0, before defeating [[Kateryna Bondarenko]], 2–6, 7–5, 6–3. In the quarterfinal, she defeated [[Victoria Azarenka]] in three sets, 7–6, 4–6, 7–6, though she failed to serve for the match twice in the last set. Li lost in the semifinals to [[Jelena Janković]], 4-6, 3-6.

Li finished the year at world no. 15, her career-high year-end ranking.

===2010===
[[File:Li Na Return Photo by Sascha Grabow.jpg|thumb|Li Na at the 2010 Stuttgart Porsche Grand Prix]]
Li's first tournament of 2010 was the [[2010 ASB Classic]] in [[Auckland]], where she was seeded second. She was defeated by [[Kaia Kanepi]] in the first round, 1-6, 3-6. In the [[Medibank International]], she defeated fourth seed [[Caroline Wozniacki]], 2–6, 6–3, 6–2. She lost to [[Flavia Pennetta]] in the second round, 2–6, 6–7.

Li was seeded 16th at the [[2010 Australian Open]]. She defeated world no. 4 [[Caroline Wozniacki]] in the fourth round, 6–4, 6–3, and then came from a set and 3–5 down to defeat world no. 6 [[Venus Williams]], 2–6, 7–6, 7–5, in her first Australian Open quarterfinal, and only her third [[Grand Slam (tennis)|Grand Slam]] quarterfinal. In the semifinals, she lost to [[Serena Williams]], 6-7, 6-7. As a result of this performance, Li was the first Chinese woman ever to be ranked in the top 10 of women's professional tennis.

At the [[Barclays Dubai Tennis Championships]], Li, the eighth seed, defeated [[María José Martínez Sánchez]], 7–6, 2–6, 6–4, in the second round. She then came from a 6–3 5–2 deficit to defeat [[Marion Bartoli]] in the third round, 3–6, 7–5, 6–0. Li retired in her quarterfinals match against [[Shahar Pe'er]]. Li was trailing 5–7, 0–3 when she retired.
Li continued her season at the inaugural [[Malaysian Open (tennis)|Malaysian Open]]. As second seed, she fell to [[Tatjana Malek]] in the first round. As seventh seed at the [[2010 BNP Paribas Open]], Li fell to [[Elena Baltacha]] in the second round, 6–7, 6–2, 6–7. Li was eighth seed at the [[2010 Sony Ericsson Open]], but fell to [[Timea Bacsinszky]] in the second round.

At the [[2010 Porsche Tennis Grand Prix]], Li defeated defending champion [[Svetlana Kuznetsova]] in the second round, before falling to eventual runner-up [[Sam Stosur]], 3-6, 3-6, in the quarterfinals. Li was 11th seed at the [[2010 French Open]]. She fell to eventual champion and no. 17 [[Francesca Schiavone]] in the third round.

Li was seeded first at the [[2010 AEGON Classic]]. She defeated fourth seed [[Aravane Rezaï]] in the semifinals, and second seed [[Maria Sharapova]] in the final to win the tournament. With the win, Li returned to the top 10 in the WTA rankings. Seeded seventh at the [[2010 AEGON International]], Li retired with a knee injury when she led [[Elena Baltacha]]. 7-6, in the first round.

Li was seeded ninth at [[2010 Wimbledon Championships|Wimbledon]]. She defeated seventh seed [[Agnieszka Radwańska]] to advance to the quarterfinals at Wimbledon for the second time in her career, where she lost to world no. 1 and defending champion [[Serena Williams]], 5-7, 3-6. By going into the last eight, Li once again returned to the top 10 in the WTA rankings. At the [[2010 US Open (tennis)|2010 US Open]], she started off as the eighth seed, but suffered an upset to [[Kateryna Bondarenko]], 6-2, 4-6, 2-6.

At the end of the year, Li's coach Thomas Hogstead chose to leave her in order to coach [[Maria Sharapova]].

===2011===
[[File:Li_Na_2011_French_Open.jpg|thumb|right|Li Na in 2011 French Open semi final]]
Li played in [[2011 Medibank International Sydney]] as eighth seed, making fast work of Australian wildcard [[Anastasia Rodionova]], 6–1, 6–2, and winning a tough three-set match against [[Virginie Razzano]], 6–4, 1–6, 6–4, in the first two rounds. In the quarterfinals she met two-time Grand Slam winner [[Svetlana Kuznetsova]] and came through with a 3–6, 7–6, 6–0 win. She defeated surprise qualifier [[Bojana Jovanovski]] in the semifinals, 7–6, 6–3, to advance to her eighth [[Women's Tennis Association|WTA]] final.<ref>http://www.medibankinternational.com.au/2011/01/li-defeats-clijsters-to-take-womens-singles#more-5399</ref> Li faced world no. 3 [[Kim Clijsters]] in the final, and despite trailing 5–0 in the first set, Li went on to defeat Clijsters, 7–6, 6–3.{{fact|date=October 2011}}

Li was ninth seed at the [[2011 Australian Open]], where she reached her first Grand Slam singles final. On her way there, she ousted the eighth seed [[Victoria Azarenka]] in straight sets, 6–3, 6–3. She then defeated world no. 1 [[Caroline Wozniacki]] in the semifinals to reach her first Grand Slam final, after saving a match point in the second set, 3–6, 7–5, 6–3. She became the first Chinese player to reach a Grand Slam singles final, facing no. 3 seed [[Kim Clijsters]] (whom she had defeated at the Medibank International). Although Li claimed the first set, Clijsters was able to rally back and claim the championship, winning 3–6, 6–3, 6–3. Despite the loss, Li's ranking rose to a career high of world no. 7.{{fact|date=October 2011}}

Despite a good early start to the season, Li then had a five-match losing streak. She lost in the first round of [[2011 Dubai Tennis Championships]] and [[2011 Qatar Ladies Open]]. After a receiving bye in the first round, she lost in the second round of the [[2011 BNP Paribas Open]]. Despite this, after Indian Wells she reached a career-high ranking of world no. 6 due, to [[Jelena Janković]]'s failures to defend her points.{{fact|date=October 2011}}

Li's losing streak then continued, when she was upset in the [[2011 Sony Ericsson Open]] by Swede [[Johanna Larsson (tennis)|Johanna Larsson]], 5–7, 7–6, 6–7. With this loss, and [[Andy Murray]]'s loss at Miami, both [[Australian Open]] finalists had yet to win a match since the first Grand Slam. Despite Li's successive losses, her no. 6 ranking was ensured due to [[Samantha Stosur]]'s inability to defend her clay-season points. After a week, she fell back to no. 7. Li then broke her losing streak by winning her first-round match against [[Anastasija Sevastova]] in Stuttgart, 6–2, 6–3. However, she subsequently lost to [[Sabine Lisicki]] in the second round, 4–6, 5–7. Even though she was not able to defend all her Stuttgart ranking points, she rose back to no. 6, with [[Samantha Stosur]]'s inability to defend her own Stuttgart points. However, with her disappointing results, Li Na sacked her husband as coach and hired the Dane [[Michael Mortensen]].{{fact|date=October 2011}}

She entered the [[2011 Mutua Madrid Open]] as sixth seed. In the first two rounds, she defeated [[María José Martínez Sánchez]], 6–4, 7–6, and [[Iveta Benešová]], 6–1, 6–4. In the third round, she defeated [[Roberta Vinci]], 2–6, 6–2, 6–1, coming back from a set deficit. She defeated [[Bethanie Mattek-Sands]], 6–4, 3–6, 6–4, coming back from 3–4 and one break down in the deciding set. This victory marked her the first semifinals appearance in Madrid, where she eventually lost to [[Petra Kvitová]], 3–6, 1–6.

Li's resurgence continued in [[2011 Internazionali BNL d'Italia]]. Seeded fourth, she received a bye in the first round. She won her opening match against [[Lourdes Domínguez Lino]], 6–4, 6–2. She defeated [[Jarmila Gajdošová]], 6–2, 6–1, and [[Gréta Arn]], 6–3, 6–1, in the next two rounds en route to back-to-back semifinals on clay court. However, she lost to [[Samantha Stosur]], 7–6, 6–0.

Li won her first [[Grand Slam (tennis)|Grand Slam]] title and become the first Grand Slam singles champion born in an Asian country at the [[2011 French Open]]. Seeded sixth, she defeated [[Barbora Záhlavová-Strýcová]], [[Silvia Soler Espinosa]], [[Sorana Cîrstea]], ninth seed [[Petra Kvitová]], fourth seed [[Victoria Azarenka]], seventh seed [[Maria Sharapova]], and fifth seed and defending champion [[Francesca Schiavone]] in the final.<ref>{{citeweb|url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2011/jun/06/li-na-french-open-champion|title=Li Na of China keeps feet on ground after historic French Open victory|date= 6 June 2011|work=Guardian|accessdate=7 June 2011}}</ref>
After the match, Li Na was praised by the Chinese media,<ref>[http://www.tsn.ca/ CHINA HAILS LI NA'S FRENCH OPEN WIN AS SOURCE OF PRIDE], [http://www.tsn.ca/ TSN.ca], June 4, 2011</ref> and her popularity throughout China was expected to grow significantly in the following months, as she became the first Chinese singles player ever to win a tennis Grandslam title.<ref>[http://thinkingchinese.com/index.php?page_id=296 Li Na – From an athlete in the shadows to a new national hero], [http://thinkingchinese.com Thinking Chinese], June 5, 2011</ref> Following the French Open, Li reached a career high ranking of World No. 4.{{fact|date=October 2011}}

As the second seed at the [[2011 AEGON International]], Li fell in the second round to [[Daniela Hantuchová]].

Due to the withdrawal of [[Kim Clijsters]], Li was the third seed at [[2011 Wimbledon Championships|Wimbledon]]. She beat [[Alla Kudryavtseva]] in the first round. She lost in the second round to eventual semifinalist [[Sabine Lisicki]] of Germany, 6-3, 4-6, 6-8, even though she had two match points at 5–3 and served for the match twice at 5–4 and 6–5.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/sports/2015404732_aptenwimbledonli.html|title=French Open champ Li loses to Lisicki at Wimbledon|date=23 June 2011|work=The Seattle Times|accessdate=23 June 2011}}</ref>

At the [[2011 US Open (tennis)|2011 US Open]] in August, Li lost to 53rd ranked [[Simona Halep]] of Romania in the first round, 2–6, 5–7.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/othersports/tennis/french-open-champion-li-na-upset-in-first-round-of-us-open-by-53rd-ranked-teen-simona-halep/2011/08/30/gIQAAnyOqJ_story.html|title=French Open champion Li Na upset in first round of US Open by 53rd-ranked teen Simona Halep|date=30 August 2011|work=The Washington Post|accessdate=30 August 2011}}</ref> In September, Li parted ways with coach Mortensen.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.tennis.com/articles/templates/ticker.aspx?articleid=14506&zoneid=6|title=Report: Li splits with coach Mortensen|date=23 September 2011|work=TENNIS.com}}</ref>

At the China Open, Li fell to Romanian player [[Monica Niculescu]] in straight sets, 4-6, 0-6. However, as a result of [[Vera Zvonareva]] and [[Samantha Stosur]]'s inability to go past the third round, she was able to qualify for the [[2011 WTA Tour Championships]].{{fact|date=October 2011}} for the first time.

Li was placed in the White Group at the [[2011 WTA Tour Championships]] in [[Istanbul, Turkey]] with [[Maria Sharapova]], [[Victoria Azarenka]] and [[Samantha Stosur]]. She beat Sharapova in her opening match 7-6, 6-4 and will face Azarenka in the next match.

==Grand Slam finals==
===Singles: 2 (1 title, 1 runner-up)===

{| class="sortable wikitable"
|-
| style="width:100px;"|'''Outcome'''
|width="60"|'''Year'''
| style="width:200px;"|'''Championship'''
|width="80"|'''Surface'''
| style="width:200px;"|'''Opponent in Final'''
| style="width:200px;"|'''Score in Final'''
|- style="background:#ffc;"
| style="background:#ffa07a;"|Runner-up || [[2011 Australian Open|2011]] || [[Australian Open]] || Hard || {{flagicon|BEL}} [[Kim Clijsters]] || 6–3, 3–6, 3–6
|- style="background:#ebc2af;"
| style="background:#98fb98;"|Winner|| [[2011 French Open - Women's Singles|2011]] || [[French Open]] || Clay || {{flagicon|ITA}} [[Francesca Schiavone]] || 6–4, 7–6<sup>(7–0)</sup>
|}

==Career statistics==
{{Main|Li Na career statistics}}

==See also==
{{Portal box|China|Biography|Tennis}}
* [[Tennis in China]]
* [[List of female tennis players]]

==Notes==
{{Reflist|group="note"}}

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
{{Commons category|Li Na}}
* {{wta|id=4846|name=Li Na}}
* {{ITF female profile|20010231}}
* [http://weibo.com/linatennis Li Na] at [[Sina Weibo]]
{{French Open women's singles champions}}
{{Top ten tennis players}}
{{Top ten Asian female tennis players}}
{{Top ten Chinese female tennis players (singles)}}

{{Persondata <!-- Metadata: see [[Wikipedia:Persondata]]. -->
| NAME = Li, Na
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES =
| SHORT DESCRIPTION =
| DATE OF BIRTH = February 26, 1982
| PLACE OF BIRTH = [[Wuhan]], [[Hubei]], [[People's Republic of China|China]]
| DATE OF DEATH =
| PLACE OF DEATH =
}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Li, Na}}
[[Category:1982 births]]
[[Category:Living people]]
[[Category:Chinese female tennis players]]
[[Category:Olympic tennis players of China]]
[[Category:People from Wuhan]]
[[Category:French Open champions]]
[[Category:Tennis players at the 2000 Summer Olympics]]
[[Category:Tennis players at the 2008 Summer Olympics]]
[[Category:Tennis players at the 2010 Asian Games]]
[[Category:Asian Games medalists in tennis]]

[[af:Li Na (tennisspeler)]]
[[bn:লি না]]
[[zh-min-nan:Lí Nā]]
[[bg:Ли На]]
[[ca:Li Na]]
[[cs:Li Na]]
[[da:Li Na]]
[[de:Li Na (Tennisspielerin)]]
[[et:Li Na]]
[[es:Li Na]]
[[eo:Li Na]]
[[fr:Li Na (tennis)]]
[[hi:ली ना]]
[[hr:Na Li]]
[[id:Li Na]]
[[it:Na Li]]
[[he:נה לי]]
[[lv:Na Li]]
[[hu:Li Na (teniszező)]]
[[mr:ली ना]]
[[mzn:لی نا]]
[[nl:Li Na (tennisster)]]
[[ne:ली ना]]
[[ja:李娜]]
[[no:Li Na]]
[[pl:Li Na]]
[[pt:Li Na (tenista)]]
[[ru:Ли На]]
[[sk:Na Liová]]
[[sr:Ли На]]
[[sh:Na Li]]
[[fi:Li Na]]
[[sv:Li Na]]
[[ta:லீ நா]]
[[th:หลี่ น่า]]
[[tr:Li Na]]
[[uk:Лі На]]
[[vi:Lý Na (vận động viên quần vợt)]]
[[zh-yue:李娜 (網球手)]]
[[zh:李娜 (网球运动员)]]

Revision as of 07:56, 1 November 2011

Template:Chinese-name

Li Na
李娜
Li Na at the 2010 Stuttgart Porsche Cup
Country (sports) China
ResidenceWuhan, Hubei, China
Born (1982-02-26) February 26, 1982 (age 42)
Wuhan, Hubei, China
Height1.72 m (5 ft 7+12 in)
Turned pro1999
PlaysRight handed (two-handed backhand)
Prize money$6,586,058
Singles
Career record388–148
Career titles5 WTA, 19 ITF
Highest rankingNo. 4 (June 6, 2011)
Current rankingNo. 5 (October 24, 2011)
Grand Slam singles results
Australian OpenF (2011)
French OpenW (2011)
WimbledonQF (2006, 2010)
US OpenQF (2009)
Doubles
Career record120–49
Career titles2 WTA, 16 ITF
Highest rankingNo. 54 (August 28, 2006)
Grand Slam doubles results
Australian Open2R (2006, 2007)
French Open2R (2006, 2007)
Wimbledon2R (2006)
US Open3R (2005)
Last updated on: October 10, 2011.
Li Na
Medal record
Representing  China
Women's Tennis
Universiade
Gold medal – first place 2001 Beijing Singles
Gold medal – first place 2001 Beijing Doubles
Gold medal – first place 2001 Beijing Mixed Doubles
Asian Games
Gold medal – first place 2010 Guangzhou Team
Bronze medal – third place 2006 Doha Singles
Li Na
Chinese李娜
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu PinyinLǐ Nà
Wade–Gilesli3 na4
IPA[lìnâ]

Li Na (Chinese: 李娜; pinyin: Lǐ Nà[note 1]; born February 26, 1982) is a Chinese professional tennis player. Li has won 5 WTA and 19 ITF singles titles. Li won the 2011 French Open singles title, making her the first Asian country representative to win a Grand Slam in singles. With her performance at the 2011 Australian Open, she became the first player from an Asian country to appear in a Grand Slam singles final.[note 2]

Off the court

Li Na was born on February 26, 1982, in Wuhan, Hubei, China. Her father Li Shengpeng (李盛鹏) was a professional badminton player and later worked as a sales rep for a Wuhan based company. He died from a rare cardiovascular disease when Li Na was 14.[1]

At age 6, Li Na started playing badminton, following her father's footsteps. Just before she turned eight, Li made the transition from badminton to tennis when she and her parents were convinced by coach Xia Xiyao of the Wuhan youth tennis club that this would be the right career move for her.[2] Li joined China's National Tennis Team in 1997 and turned pro in 1999.

At the end of 2002, Li left the national tennis team to study part-time at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, where she completed her bachelor's degree in journalism in 2009. The Chinese media cited various reasons for this. Some reported that the relationship between her and her teammate, future husband Jiang Shan (姜山), was opposed by the national team's management,[3] some reported that her coach Yu Liqiao (余丽桥) was too strict and demanding,[4] while other reports claimed that her request for a personal coach did not go through.[5]

However, Li returned to the national team in 2004. Jiang Shan married Li and became her personal coach in 2006. Li quit the national team[6] as well as the state-run sports system in 2008 under an experimental reform policy for tennis players. This change was called "Fly Alone" (单飞) by Chinese media.[7] As a result Li had the freedom to pick her own coaching staff and she could keep more of her winnings.[8] Only 8 to 12 percent of her winnings go to the government as opposed to 65 percent previously.[9]

Career

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.

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 Li Ting (unrelated); 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, Jelena Janković, and Peng Shuai.

Her career has been plagued by injuries and other troubles that have prevented 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.

1999–2002

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 Westende, Belgium. She also won all of her 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, 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, this brought her cumulative ITF singles title count up 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 no. 303 by the year's close.

She won her 15th 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 Ondrášková in the $50,000 event at Dinan, France that April), followed by a lengthy absence from the circuit for the next 25 months.

Sources vary as to the causes of this absence, the Chinese media mostly cited the conflict between her and the China's National Tennis Team's administration and coaching staff.[3][4][5] Some claimed that she just wanted a break from professional tennis so she could concentrate on her studies at the university.

2004

In May 2004, she returned to the circuit unranked, and won 26 successive matches to notch three further $25,000 tournament wins and another $50,000 title, increasing her career singles title count to 18, only to have her winning streak finally snapped by Evgenia Linetskaya in the semifinal of the $50,000 Bronx tournament that August. However, she won her 16th ITF doubles tournament at the same event, the 17th 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 a wildcard entry into qualifying at the Beijing. There, 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 scores were 6–3, 6–7, 6–7, and the Russian afterwards praised her Chinese opponent, stating that she had felt as though she was up against a top-5 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-graded 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 Suchá, 6–3, 6–4, to claim her first WTA Tour title. In so doing, she became the first Chinese woman 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 19th ITF singles title and 20th overall singles title of her career, but losing in the quarterfinals 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 51 singles matches and lost just four.

2005

2005 saw Li 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 semifinal 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 quarterfinals at Hyderabad (losing to Russian Maria Kirilenko). 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 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 3-6, 6-7.

After taking a month off from competition, Li returned at Estoril in late April, defeating Stéphanie 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 Šafářová, who prevailed in a close three-set match, 7–6, 4–6, 3–6.

At Rabat in May, Li reached the semifinal stage, but further success proved ultimately elusive for her. With the score leveled at 3–3,she retired due to a right ankle sprain while clashing with Zheng Jie. Reaching this semifinal propelled her to a career-high world ranking of no. 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 María Vento-Kabchi, before suffering her second loss of the year to Nadia Petrova at the quarterfinal stage.

It was Lindsay Davenport who proved her undoing in her next two tournaments, beating her 4-6, 4-6, in the first round of the US Open, and 2-6, 2-6, at the semifinal 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 Alona 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 quarterfinals 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 no. 33 that she had reached in the spring before her injury break, to no. 56 at the year's close.

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.

Early-round draws against high-ranked players towards the beginning of 2006 took a heavy toll on Li's singles ranking, bringing it slipping down to no. 71 by the end of February.

She returned with a career-best performance at Tier I events by reaching the semifinal at Berlin. On the way there, she achieved her first victory over a current top-10-ranked player as she ousted Patty Schnyder for the first time at the quarterfinal stage. However, this match left her with a muscle sprain, and she lost to Nadia Petrova in the semifinal. Nonetheless, her performance at this high-level tournament saw her ranked no. 39.

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. Her ranking following this tournament was 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 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.

At Wimbledon, she reached the fourth round with comfortable straight-sets wins over respected grass-court players Virginie Razzano and recent Birmingham semifinalist Meilen Tu, followed by victory against 10th seeded Svetlana Kuznetsova, resulting in her being the first Chinese player ever to reach any Grand Slam quarterfinal. Li rose to a new career high WTA ranking of no. 20 following the tournament, even though she ultimately lost her quarterfinal match against Kim Clijsters in two close sets.

She reached the quarterfinals at Stockholm, and the fourth round at the US Open, where she was beaten by Maria Sharapova, 4-6, 2-6. She then reached the quarterfinals at the China Open, where she was beaten by Svetlana Kuznetsova, and in Guangzhou.

2007

Li Na at 2008 Fortis Championships Luxembourg

Li Na started the year by participating a Tier III event in Gold Coast, Australia, where she reached the second round. The next week, she competed in Sydney. 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, 6-1, 1-6, 5-7. 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 Domínguez Lino in straight sets through the first two rounds, leading to a matchup with no. 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, no. 6 Martina Hingis. Due to a 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, 6-4, 3-6, 0-6, committing 69 unforced errors. Despite the loss, the tournament was a success for Na, as it marked the third straight time in a Grand Slam that she advanced at least to the fourth round.

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 Samantha Stosur, 2-6, 4-6, converting 0 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, 5-7,6-4, 1-6. 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 quarterfinals to Anna Chakvetadze, 6-4, 5-7, 2-6.

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-20 player Karolina Šprem in straight sets, 3-6, 3-6. At the Family Circle Cup held in Charleston, South Carolina, she fell in the third round to Anabel Medina Garrigues, 4-6, 5-7.

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.

2008

Li Na at the 2008 Wimbledon Championships.

Li Na had not played a professional match in half a year and had resultantly slipped to no. 29 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.[10] In the final, she narrowly prevailed against Victoria Azarenka, 4–6, 6–3, 6–4, to score her first singles title since Guangzhou 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 Sydney, after suffering a right knee injury. Her failure to defend her previous year's semifinal performance at this event cost her 125 ranking points, which dipped her ranking back down to no. 30 for the week beginning 14 January.

Going into 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 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 semifinals with back-to-back straight-sets wins over Russian veteran Elena Likhovtseva, 6–1, 6–1, Slovak world no. 45 Dominika Cibulková, 6–4, 6–4 and on-form Swedish world no. 66 Sofia Arvidsson, 7–5, 6–4. However, she came unstuck in the semifinals 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. This tournament brought her back up within the top 30 at world no. 29.

The 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 2, 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, 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 quarterfinals, 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 semifinals, where she played Vera Zvonareva, 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. She returned to action at the International Women's Open in Eastbourne, winning one round before losing to Nadia Petrova. She then contested Wimbledon, defeating Anastasia Rodionova, 3–6, 6–0, 6–1, before losing 2-6, 4-6 to Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova.

At the Beijing Olympics, following early-round victories against world no. 3 Svetlana Kuznetsova, Ayumi Morita, and Kaia Kanepi, she went on to defeat one of the favourites, Venus Williams, in the quarterfinals. Li was trailing 1–4 in the first set, but then managed to strengthen her game to win in straight sets. Li lost her semifinal match to sixth seed Dinara Safina, 6-7, 5-7, and was then defeated in the bronze final by Vera Zvonareva. At the following US Open, Li was defeated by the Beijing Olympics gold medalist Elena Dementieva in the fourth round.

In the 2008 Porsche Grand Prix, the unseeded Li defeated no. 1 ranked Serena Williams in the second-round, 0–6, 6–1, 6–4. Li thus became only the second Chinese player to defeat a world no. 1 player, following Zheng Jie's victory over Ana Ivanović at Wimbledon in 2008.

2009

Li Na at the 2009 US Open

Li withdrew from both the inaugural Brisbane International, where she was defending champion (as she won the title at Gold Coast in 2008), and the Australian Open because of a right-knee injury. She made her comeback at the Paris Open. In the first round, she beat Ágnes Szávay, 7–6, 6–2. In the second round, she lost to second-seeded Jelena Janković, 0-6, 6-3, 2-6.

In the first round of the Barclays Dubai Tennis Championships, Li lost to Russian Elena Vesnina, 6-1, 4-6, 4-6.

Unseeded at the Monterrey Open, she defeated world no. 10 and top seed Agnieszka Radwańska in a first round match that lasted over two hours, 7–6, 4–6, 6–0. In the second round, she beat Petra Cetkovská, 6–3, 6–4. She advanced to the semifinals after defeating Lucie Šafářová, 6–3, 7–6. Li then moved into her fifth career tour final, after beating sixth-seeded Iveta Benešová, 6–3, 6–3. However, Li lost to second-seeded Marion Bartoli in the final in straight sets.

Li then played in the Premier event at Indian Wells, where she defeated Tamarine Tanasugarn, Patty Schnyder, and Amélie Mauresmo, all in straight sets, to advance to the fourth round, where she lost to eventual champion Vera Zvonareva, 4–6, 4–6.

She then reached the quarterfinals of the Premier event in Miami, where she beat qualifier Urszula Radwańska in the first round and upset 29th seed Aleksandra Wozniak to reach the third round, where she caused a big upset by defeating the previous week's Indian Wells champion, 6th-seeded Vera Zvonareva in three sets, 6–4, 3–6, 6–2. This victory was particularly important for Li, as she had been beaten by Zvonareva the week before at Indian Wells. She then faced unseeded Russian Ekaterina Makarova in the fourth round and beat her in three sets to set up a quarterfinal match with the top seed and world no. 1 Serena Williams, a match which she lost in a tight three-setter, 6–4, 6–7, 2–6. Because of her strong performance, her ranking went up to world no. 29 from world no. 40.

Her next event was the second Grand Slam of the year, the French Open in Paris. As the 25th seed, she won her first round 6–4, 6–2 against Polish Marta Domachowska. She then defeated Timea Bacsinszky and Olga Govortsova. She then lost to unseeded, former world no. 1 Maria Sharapova in the fourth round, 4–6, 6–0, 4–6. After this impressive result, she jumped six rankings up to no. 20.

She started her grass-court season as the fourth seed at the AEGON Classic in Birmingham. She advanced to the final with a 6–4, 6–4 win over Maria Sharapova in the semifinals. However, Na was defeated by Magdaléna Rybáriková, 0–6, 6–7, in the final.

Na was seeded 19th at the 2009 Wimbledon Championships. She defeated Galina Voskoboeva in the first round and Olga Govortsova in the second round, but lost to no. 11 Agnieszka Radwańska in the third round.

At the 2009 Bank of the West Classic, she lost to Serena Williams in the first round, and at the 2009 LA Women's Tennis Championships p/b Herbalife, she withdrew due to injury during her match with Urszula Radwańska of Poland.

Seeded 18th at the 2009 US Open, she reached her first US Open quarterfinals, where she lost to Kim Clijsters. En route to the quarterfinals, she defeated Ioana Raluca Olaru, Michelle Larcher de Brito, Maria Kirilenko, and Francesca Schiavone all in straight sets.

Seeded 15th at the Toray Pan Pacific Open, Li Na won her opening match against Alizé Cornet, 6–4, 6–0. She then defeated Vera Dushevina, 7–5, 6–0, before defeating Kateryna Bondarenko, 2–6, 7–5, 6–3. In the quarterfinal, she defeated Victoria Azarenka in three sets, 7–6, 4–6, 7–6, though she failed to serve for the match twice in the last set. Li lost in the semifinals to Jelena Janković, 4-6, 3-6.

Li finished the year at world no. 15, her career-high year-end ranking.

2010

Li Na at the 2010 Stuttgart Porsche Grand Prix

Li's first tournament of 2010 was the 2010 ASB Classic in Auckland, where she was seeded second. She was defeated by Kaia Kanepi in the first round, 1-6, 3-6. In the Medibank International, she defeated fourth seed Caroline Wozniacki, 2–6, 6–3, 6–2. She lost to Flavia Pennetta in the second round, 2–6, 6–7.

Li was seeded 16th at the 2010 Australian Open. She defeated world no. 4 Caroline Wozniacki in the fourth round, 6–4, 6–3, and then came from a set and 3–5 down to defeat world no. 6 Venus Williams, 2–6, 7–6, 7–5, in her first Australian Open quarterfinal, and only her third Grand Slam quarterfinal. In the semifinals, she lost to Serena Williams, 6-7, 6-7. As a result of this performance, Li was the first Chinese woman ever to be ranked in the top 10 of women's professional tennis.

At the Barclays Dubai Tennis Championships, Li, the eighth seed, defeated María José Martínez Sánchez, 7–6, 2–6, 6–4, in the second round. She then came from a 6–3 5–2 deficit to defeat Marion Bartoli in the third round, 3–6, 7–5, 6–0. Li retired in her quarterfinals match against Shahar Pe'er. Li was trailing 5–7, 0–3 when she retired. Li continued her season at the inaugural Malaysian Open. As second seed, she fell to Tatjana Malek in the first round. As seventh seed at the 2010 BNP Paribas Open, Li fell to Elena Baltacha in the second round, 6–7, 6–2, 6–7. Li was eighth seed at the 2010 Sony Ericsson Open, but fell to Timea Bacsinszky in the second round.

At the 2010 Porsche Tennis Grand Prix, Li defeated defending champion Svetlana Kuznetsova in the second round, before falling to eventual runner-up Sam Stosur, 3-6, 3-6, in the quarterfinals. Li was 11th seed at the 2010 French Open. She fell to eventual champion and no. 17 Francesca Schiavone in the third round.

Li was seeded first at the 2010 AEGON Classic. She defeated fourth seed Aravane Rezaï in the semifinals, and second seed Maria Sharapova in the final to win the tournament. With the win, Li returned to the top 10 in the WTA rankings. Seeded seventh at the 2010 AEGON International, Li retired with a knee injury when she led Elena Baltacha. 7-6, in the first round.

Li was seeded ninth at Wimbledon. She defeated seventh seed Agnieszka Radwańska to advance to the quarterfinals at Wimbledon for the second time in her career, where she lost to world no. 1 and defending champion Serena Williams, 5-7, 3-6. By going into the last eight, Li once again returned to the top 10 in the WTA rankings. At the 2010 US Open, she started off as the eighth seed, but suffered an upset to Kateryna Bondarenko, 6-2, 4-6, 2-6.

At the end of the year, Li's coach Thomas Hogstead chose to leave her in order to coach Maria Sharapova.

2011

Li Na in 2011 French Open semi final

Li played in 2011 Medibank International Sydney as eighth seed, making fast work of Australian wildcard Anastasia Rodionova, 6–1, 6–2, and winning a tough three-set match against Virginie Razzano, 6–4, 1–6, 6–4, in the first two rounds. In the quarterfinals she met two-time Grand Slam winner Svetlana Kuznetsova and came through with a 3–6, 7–6, 6–0 win. She defeated surprise qualifier Bojana Jovanovski in the semifinals, 7–6, 6–3, to advance to her eighth WTA final.[11] Li faced world no. 3 Kim Clijsters in the final, and despite trailing 5–0 in the first set, Li went on to defeat Clijsters, 7–6, 6–3.[citation needed]

Li was ninth seed at the 2011 Australian Open, where she reached her first Grand Slam singles final. On her way there, she ousted the eighth seed Victoria Azarenka in straight sets, 6–3, 6–3. She then defeated world no. 1 Caroline Wozniacki in the semifinals to reach her first Grand Slam final, after saving a match point in the second set, 3–6, 7–5, 6–3. She became the first Chinese player to reach a Grand Slam singles final, facing no. 3 seed Kim Clijsters (whom she had defeated at the Medibank International). Although Li claimed the first set, Clijsters was able to rally back and claim the championship, winning 3–6, 6–3, 6–3. Despite the loss, Li's ranking rose to a career high of world no. 7.[citation needed]

Despite a good early start to the season, Li then had a five-match losing streak. She lost in the first round of 2011 Dubai Tennis Championships and 2011 Qatar Ladies Open. After a receiving bye in the first round, she lost in the second round of the 2011 BNP Paribas Open. Despite this, after Indian Wells she reached a career-high ranking of world no. 6 due, to Jelena Janković's failures to defend her points.[citation needed]

Li's losing streak then continued, when she was upset in the 2011 Sony Ericsson Open by Swede Johanna Larsson, 5–7, 7–6, 6–7. With this loss, and Andy Murray's loss at Miami, both Australian Open finalists had yet to win a match since the first Grand Slam. Despite Li's successive losses, her no. 6 ranking was ensured due to Samantha Stosur's inability to defend her clay-season points. After a week, she fell back to no. 7. Li then broke her losing streak by winning her first-round match against Anastasija Sevastova in Stuttgart, 6–2, 6–3. However, she subsequently lost to Sabine Lisicki in the second round, 4–6, 5–7. Even though she was not able to defend all her Stuttgart ranking points, she rose back to no. 6, with Samantha Stosur's inability to defend her own Stuttgart points. However, with her disappointing results, Li Na sacked her husband as coach and hired the Dane Michael Mortensen.[citation needed]

She entered the 2011 Mutua Madrid Open as sixth seed. In the first two rounds, she defeated María José Martínez Sánchez, 6–4, 7–6, and Iveta Benešová, 6–1, 6–4. In the third round, she defeated Roberta Vinci, 2–6, 6–2, 6–1, coming back from a set deficit. She defeated Bethanie Mattek-Sands, 6–4, 3–6, 6–4, coming back from 3–4 and one break down in the deciding set. This victory marked her the first semifinals appearance in Madrid, where she eventually lost to Petra Kvitová, 3–6, 1–6.

Li's resurgence continued in 2011 Internazionali BNL d'Italia. Seeded fourth, she received a bye in the first round. She won her opening match against Lourdes Domínguez Lino, 6–4, 6–2. She defeated Jarmila Gajdošová, 6–2, 6–1, and Gréta Arn, 6–3, 6–1, in the next two rounds en route to back-to-back semifinals on clay court. However, she lost to Samantha Stosur, 7–6, 6–0.

Li won her first Grand Slam title and become the first Grand Slam singles champion born in an Asian country at the 2011 French Open. Seeded sixth, she defeated Barbora Záhlavová-Strýcová, Silvia Soler Espinosa, Sorana Cîrstea, ninth seed Petra Kvitová, fourth seed Victoria Azarenka, seventh seed Maria Sharapova, and fifth seed and defending champion Francesca Schiavone in the final.[12] After the match, Li Na was praised by the Chinese media,[13] and her popularity throughout China was expected to grow significantly in the following months, as she became the first Chinese singles player ever to win a tennis Grandslam title.[14] Following the French Open, Li reached a career high ranking of World No. 4.[citation needed]

As the second seed at the 2011 AEGON International, Li fell in the second round to Daniela Hantuchová.

Due to the withdrawal of Kim Clijsters, Li was the third seed at Wimbledon. She beat Alla Kudryavtseva in the first round. She lost in the second round to eventual semifinalist Sabine Lisicki of Germany, 6-3, 4-6, 6-8, even though she had two match points at 5–3 and served for the match twice at 5–4 and 6–5.[15]

At the 2011 US Open in August, Li lost to 53rd ranked Simona Halep of Romania in the first round, 2–6, 5–7.[16] In September, Li parted ways with coach Mortensen.[17]

At the China Open, Li fell to Romanian player Monica Niculescu in straight sets, 4-6, 0-6. However, as a result of Vera Zvonareva and Samantha Stosur's inability to go past the third round, she was able to qualify for the 2011 WTA Tour Championships.[citation needed] for the first time.

Li was placed in the White Group at the 2011 WTA Tour Championships in Istanbul, Turkey with Maria Sharapova, Victoria Azarenka and Samantha Stosur. She beat Sharapova in her opening match 7-6, 6-4 and will face Azarenka in the next match.

Grand Slam finals

Singles: 2 (1 title, 1 runner-up)

Outcome Year Championship Surface Opponent in Final Score in Final
Runner-up 2011 Australian Open Hard Belgium Kim Clijsters 6–3, 3–6, 3–6
Winner 2011 French Open Clay Italy Francesca Schiavone 6–4, 7–6(7–0)

Career statistics

See also

Notes

  1. ^ The official Chinese naming system states that the family name, Li (李), goes first before the equivalent of a first name in some other nations. Her name off court in China is Li Na. When listed on the WTA Tour website, she is known as Na Li. However, in the match, the commentators call her Li Na, and when her full name is listed in text on court, it is also written as Li Na.
  2. ^ The words "Asian" mentioned here mean "from an Asian country", rather than "born in Asia" or "of Asian descent".

References

  1. ^ "她最爱吃妈妈煮的面". 青年报. Jan 31, 2011. Retrieved Jun 3, 2011.
  2. ^ Branch, John (September 8, 2009). "China's Li Na Finds a Taste of Home in New York". The New York Times. Retrieved May 7, 2010.
  3. ^ a b "李娜—09中国网球公开赛参赛选手简介". Yahoo China. Oct 2, 2009. Retrieved Jun 3, 2011.
  4. ^ a b "李娜自曝当年退役缘由 称:余丽桥不懂得表扬队员". 武汉晚报. Oct 10, 2010. Retrieved Jun 3, 2011.
  5. ^ a b "个性李娜单飞后屡获成功 映射举国体制之尴尬". 163.com. Jan 29, 2011. Retrieved Jun 3, 2011.
  6. ^ "Li Na serves an ace by flying solo". Financial Times. Jan 28, 2011. Retrieved Jun 3, 2011.
  7. ^ "分析:李娜单飞的意义". Financial Times Chinese. Jan 28, 2011. Retrieved Jun 6, 2011.
  8. ^ Li Na tops Francesca Schiavone for title. ESPN. June 4, 2011. Accessed 2011-06-06.
  9. ^ Cnn.com: "Li Na: China's tennis rebel is people's idol" 4 June 2011
  10. ^ Women's Tennis Association (2008-01-03). "Safina's Golden Reign Comes To An End". Women's Tennis Association. Retrieved 2008-01-03.
  11. ^ http://www.medibankinternational.com.au/2011/01/li-defeats-clijsters-to-take-womens-singles#more-5399
  12. ^ "Li Na of China keeps feet on ground after historic French Open victory". Guardian. 6 June 2011. Retrieved 7 June 2011.
  13. ^ CHINA HAILS LI NA'S FRENCH OPEN WIN AS SOURCE OF PRIDE, TSN.ca, June 4, 2011
  14. ^ Li Na – From an athlete in the shadows to a new national hero, Thinking Chinese, June 5, 2011
  15. ^ "French Open champ Li loses to Lisicki at Wimbledon". The Seattle Times. 23 June 2011. Retrieved 23 June 2011.
  16. ^ "French Open champion Li Na upset in first round of US Open by 53rd-ranked teen Simona Halep". The Washington Post. 30 August 2011. Retrieved 30 August 2011.
  17. ^ "Report: Li splits with coach Mortensen". TENNIS.com. 23 September 2011.

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