Biography of Li Na on ITF Circuit
To put it mildly, when Li Na turned professional in 1999, she undeniably, dominated the ITF Circuit tour. Li won three of the very first four tournaments she entered and also won the first seven ITF doubles tournaments she entered.
In 2000, she won a total of 52 singles matches on the ITF Circuit, more than any other player, notching up another eight tournament titles including one at the $50,000 level, two at $25,000, and an unbroken run of four successive $10,000 tournament wins in March-April.
In June, after her world ranking had soared to 136 on the strength of her ITF performances alone, she gained direct entry into her first WTA Tour event. Although she lost her first WTA singles match despite winning the first set, she captured the women’s doubles title at the same event in partnership with Li Ting; and by the end of the year had won a total of four WTA singles matches, in addition to increasing her cumulative ITF singles title count to eleven.
In 2001, Li won two more $25,000 ITF singles tournaments, but then played only one further match for the rest of the year, leading her ranking to fall to 303 by the year’s end.
In 2002, Li won her first $75,000 singles tournament at Midland, USA en route to the title, the fourteenth of her career.Folowing that match however, she then played just one further match before suffering a complete absence of more than two years from the circuit. Sources vary as to the causes of this absence, with some citing ‘health reasons’ but others asserting that she decided to take a break from professional tennis to study at university.
In May 2004, however, she returned to the circuit after a 25-month absence, unranked, and won her first twenty-six consecutive matches, to notch up three more $25,000 tournament wins and another $50,000 title, increasing her career singles title count to eighteen, only to have her winning streak finally snapped by Evgenia Linetskaya in the semifinal of the $50,000 Bronx tournament that August. However, Li did win her sixteenth ITF doubles tournament at the same event. 2005 saw Li Na finally abandoning the ITF circuit to focus solely on WTA-level events.
Early this season, Li was faced with a tough road ahead as the 2006 season got underway. In January, Li entered the Australian Open in both singles and doubles, but was faced with some tough first-round opponents after some unlucky draws. The Chinese 23-year-old had to play Serena Williams in the first round of the singles tournament. She put up a good fight and brought the game into a three-set match, but the game ended 3-6 7-6 1-6 in favor of Williams.
Li progressed only slightly better in the mixed doubles, making it to the second round with her partner Yeu-Tzuoo Wang before losing to Martina Hingis and Mahesh Bhupathi 2-6 2-6.
In late May, she enjoyed a second-round victory over competent Top-30 star Nathalie Dechy of France, 6-3 7-6; but her perfomance collapsed after she took an early lead against rival-turned-doubles-partner Jelena Jankovic in Round Three, her first loss to Jankovic in three career meetings.
In her first ever appearance at Roland Garros, Li toughed out hard-earned victories against veteran Amy Frazier and impressive young Russian Anna Chakvetadze to earn herself a third-round spot, then put up a brave but ultimately unsuccessful fight against eventual finalist Svetlana Kuznetsova, going down by a final scoreline of 3-6 6-7. She emerged from the tournament with a personal best WTA ranking of 32, as several players previously ranked comfortably above her failed to adequately defend their ranking points from the previous year.
Joining the WTA grass court season for the first time at Birmingham in June, she managed another third-round finish with wins over Mashona Washington and excellent grass-court player Eleni Daniilidou, both in straight sets, then lost for the third time in three meetings to grass-court queen Maria Sharapova.
However, Li’s third consecutive third-round performance in tournaments where she had no ranking points to defend from the previous year was enough to lift her ranking to No. 30, the all-time record for Chinese females.
At the same event, partnering Jelena Jankovic, she notched up her second career WTA doubles title, almost six years exactly from her first at Tashkent.
Taking due advantage of her hard-earned Wimbledon seeding, Li cruised to the third round with crushingly one-sided straight-sets victories over two respectable grass-court players to set up her second consecutive third-round Grand Slam tie against Svetlana Kuznetsova.
After two close defeats in two career head-to-heads against Kuznetsova, Li finally scored her first victory over the 5th-seeded Russian. To seal this breakthrough win, Li’s second career victory over a current Top-10-ranked player, she had to fight back from a set down, but ultimately vanquished the Russian 3-6 6-2 6-3, becoming the second Chinese player to reach the fourth round at a Grand Slam tournament.
Li then went on to defeat 10th-seeded Czech player Nicole Vaidisova 4-6 6-1 6-3 to reach her first Grand Slam quarterfinal, becoming the first Chinese player ever to reach any Grand Slam quarterfinal. Li rose to a new career high WTA ranking of 22 following the tournament, even though she ultimately lost her quarter-final match against Kim Clijsters in two close sets, 4-6, 5-7, despite being 5-2 ahead in the second at one stage.
On June 19th, Li achieved a new milestone in becoming the first Chinese woman ever to be ranked within the WTA Top 30, at No. 30. Li’s current ranking is No. 22 and she is undoubtedly becoming a major threat to win every tournament she enters.
