Li Na triumphs over Francesca Schiavone at French Open ‎

HELLO China.

It is the only appropriate response a temp- orarily exiled Glaswegian could give to the extraordinary events on Court Philippe Chatrier at Roland Garros yesterday afternoon.

Li Na became the first Asian woman to win a singles event in a Grand Slam tournament. Her French Open final victory over defending champion Francesca Schiavone was almost routine. Nothing else was.

The Chinese player won 6-4, 7-6 (7-0) in one hour 48 minutes and only threatened to wilt when she was broken at 4-3 in the second set. But the significance of yesterday’s events extends past a mediocre final. Her homeland has a population of more than one billion and both the men’s and women’s tours have been courting the country in recent years.

Li, who reached the final of the Australian Open in January, losing to Kim Clijsters, has put tennis at the forefront of a huge burgeoning market.

Perversely, it was the final that many in Paris did not want. France’s Marion Bartoli was knocked out by Schiavone in one semi-final and Li defeated Maria Sharapova in the other.

Yesterday’s match was dubbed the The Fire v The Ice, with the feisty Schiavone playing the former role. In truth, the Italian was overpowered in the early stages and never gained a foothold in the match. Li’s power and assurance only deserted her briefly in the second set when the realisation that she was on the brink of a Grand Slam victory unnerved her, allowing Schiavone to break back.

However, the decisive tie-break told the story of the match with a merciless precision. Li won all seven points before falling to the ground in celebration.

With Li at 29 and Schiavone at 30, this was the oldest Grand Slam final since Wimbledon in 1998 when Jana Novotna defeated Nathalie Tauziat. It was played at a tempo, however, that made no concessions to age.

Schiavone’s game is based on both a variety of shot and an ability to cover the court with her darting sprints. Li, powerful and alert, moved well, too, complementing her strong service game with devastating shots off both sides.

Li has progressed smoothly up the world rankings. At No 7 coming into Roland Garros, she will almost certainly enter the top five tomorrow. Further improvement is not beyond her. Her physique, strength and serve should all be powerful weapons at Wimbledon.

Last night, though, she was entitled to concentrate only on the achievement of Paris. Li, who gave up tennis for two years in 2002 to study journalism, said she would describe her victory in print as “a dream come true”.

As the media corps struggled to put a number on the Chinese watching the match on television, with estimates ranging extravagantly from 40 million to 400 million, Li revealed that any viewer figure would be short of at least one native. Her mum. “She is too nervous to watch,” said the champion.

Li, though, said her victory would have a huge effect on Chinese tennis. But, more pertinently, it will galvanise the player. She said her experience in Melbourne had helped her in the difficult moments of yesterday’s final and she looked forward to Wimbledon with quiet confidence.

Li will not return home in triumph just yet. She heads now to Eastbourne to tune up on the grass surface before advancing on south London. “I will go back home after Wimbledon,” she said. “If I don’t do well in Wimbledon, maybe people forget me already. These are tough times, you know.”

Li is a tough competitor and employer, too. Her husband, Jiang Shan, paid the price for her defeat in Melbourne, being sacked as her coach. He is now restricted to hitting duties while Michael Mortensen of Denmark does the coaching.

“I just wanted a change,” said Li of a move that would certainly have altered the temperature in the player’s household. “I want to be even better, so that’s why after Melbourne I changed my team a little bit.”

Schiavone was typically gracious in defeat, downplaying a controversial over-rule by the umpire that went against her and praising her opponent’s improved mobility on clay.

However, she was more cautious over attempts to portray Li as a potential No 1. “It is open, but to be No 1 you have really to win many, many matches. Not just one tournament, one Grand Slam,” she said.

Francesca Schiavone, Na Li showing tennis' youth how it's done ‎

PARIS — Li Na of China is 29 years old, and she will be the younger of the two women in Saturday’s French Open singles final.

Her opponent, Francesca Schiavone of Italy, last year’s champion, turns 31 next month.

These two old ladies are going to show the kids how you go about winning a major.

Much has been written about the aging of the WTA Tour, with the next wave seemingly stalled the last couple of years.

In 2011, it has morphed from emerging trend to fact of life — even with the Williams sisters out and 27-year-old Kim Clijsters in and out.

Li Na

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.