TENNIS AUSTRALIAN OPEN:LI NA, the 28-year-old from Hubei province in the middle of China is two matches from expanding her profile beyond her fondest dreams in the final of the Australian Open.
If she can win this title, it will be China’s first in a grand slam. Yesterday she moved closer to the prize, beating Germany’s Andrea Petkovic in straight sets in 144 minutes.
Now she looks to Caroline Wozniacki, the world number one, in the semi-finals on Friday. Wozniacki has issues of her own: she is the world’s best player without a major to her name. Vindication here would silence a lot of critics. For much of this week, Wozniacki has embarked on a charm offensive with the media.
To some extent, it has worked. She was not brilliantly funny in the press conference she hijacked, and her kangaroo joke backfired spectacularly, but she has a bank of goodwill that will take some time to exhaust.
If Li, a one-time badminton hopeful whose coaches persuaded her to switch to tennis, is to be remembered for her part in China’s development, she will have to get past Wozniacki. Only then will she be on the way to validating the system that made her and highlighting its misgivings.
She has got this far in her career with serious financial backing as a junior but she has blossomed since, free of the shackles of her mentors. It is a mutually acceptable stand-off between state and individual. Li abandoned the state sponsorship of her communist country principally to ensure she could choose her own coach – her husband – and the venues at which she wanted to compete. She has done that to near perfection.
Out on her own here in the Melbourne sunshine she beat Petkovic with startling ease. She might be about to fulfil her promise. Hardcore fans have tracked her progress. Others will wonder whence she came. “I was at university, 2002 to 2004,” she said. “Those were two years I didn’t play tennis because I was thinking about my low ranking, always, like, around 120. But I never have a chance to play big tournaments, always play challenge.
“So I feel, okay, I should give up. I couldn’t find anything positive. I went to university for two years and for two years I wanted to come back to tennis. This is my life. I couldn’t do what other people do, as well as people after university looking for some job. But, after two years, I was feeling okay. I’m grown up, I should stand up to try my best.”
She revealed her mother has never seen her play. “If I win, and my (mother) talks, she wins too. Then she can start the video . . . I just got a text message from uncle, my mum, brother: ‘Everyone says good job.’ I say, where is my mum? Oh, she’s somewhere else. You need to stay focused. Sometimes that’s what’s going to happen.”
Wozniacki is an altogether different story. She is richly endorsed, guaranteed wealth beyond her dreams and utterly humble. When she skated past the Italian veteran Francesca Schiavone, she might have played her toughest match of the tournament, or maybe even her career.
She came from a set and 3-1 down to go through in three sets. “It was very difficult. Francesca was playing well. It was tough for me to get the right rhythm. I don’t mind playing three-setters in general. I feel in good shape and I can keep playing out there. So I was just trying to stay in the match. She still hadn’t won it. When I went to the third set, I was really pumped and ready to go out there and fight until the last ball.”
She did not need to do that exactly, as Schiavone ran out of legs. She had, after all, taken part in the longest women’s game in slams only 48 hours before – even if she was not complaining.
Schiavone took her licks with all the equanimity she accepted the plaudits of sport’s fickle constituency. When asked if she worried about reclaiming the number one ranking in women’s tennis, she was suitably flippant. “I don’t think about the rankings. I just want to try to win every match I’m playing, and then we’ll see what happens. If I’m number one, it’s fantastic.”
A thorny issue that has been raised again in this tournament is that of coaching from the sidelines. “I like it,” Wozniacki said. “I think it’s a good thing. It makes it more interesting. I think that the crowd likes it more also that they hear it at home, what we talk about. ”
Li will do well to beat Wozniacki, with or without courtside coaching. But she has wondrous footwork and a hunger for work on the court that is frightening.
This might be a match too far for Wozniacki, who looks to be physically fading. And that is no wonder, given she had to stretch herself to the limit against the grand lady of her sport.
Guardian Service
