Li Na (Chinese: 李娜; pinyin: Lǐ Nà) (born February 26, 1982) is a Chinese professional tennis player.As of May 2, 2011, she is ranked as No. 6 in the world according to the Women's Tennis Association singles rankings; which equals her career high. She has won four WTA and nineteen ITF titles. At the 2011 Australian Open, Li Na became China's first Grand Slam singles finalist player.
Early life
From the central China metropolis of Wuhan, Li was a badminton player when she was 6 years old but her coach kept noticing that she looked as if she were playing tennis. By the time she was 8, her coach asked her parents if she could switch to tennis, which she did at the age of 9.
Playing style
Li's game is characterised by her powerful, deep groundstrokes, athleticism, and quick reflexes and ominous bellows. She tends to play mostly from the baseline but is also somewhat comfortable at the net. Her backhand is the more powerful of her two groundstrokes, both of which she is known to scatter unpredictably to all corners of the playing surface. One of Li's weaknesses is her unusually high number of unforced errors. Li also lacks variety in her game, as she usually hits hard and flat and is rarely able to produce topspin or slices.
Career
Li Na playing at the 2009 US Open
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.
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; 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 that have interrupted her from playing for lengthy periods, and often preventing her from being highly ranked. 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.