Последнее слово - Ли На

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The Last Word: WTA No. 5, Li Na

By Peter Bodo - Monday, December 19, 2011

Best of 2011

It wasn’t just that she won the French Open, it’s how Li managed to pull off the feat—with successive wins (starting in the round of 16) over year-end No. 2 Petra Kvitova, No. 3 Victoria Azarenka, No. 4 Maria Sharapova—and defending champion Francesca Schiavone.

Worst of 2011

In a year in which Li made two Grand Slam finals and became the first Asian of either sex to win a Grand Slam singles title, her multitude of mediocre results was forgivable. But it’s still hard to figure how she took such a brutal loss to end this otherwise historic year. With a chance to qualify for the semifinals at the WTA Championships, Li lost her third and final round-robin match to Sam Stosur via a cringeworthy 6-1, 6-0.

Year in Review

On the cusp of 29 at the start of the year, it had seemed to many that the No. 11-ranked Li had her work cut out. But she went right at it from early January, setting the tone with a surprising win over Kim Clijsters at Sydney.

The women would meet again in the Australian Open final, where Clijsters got the best of Li in a match that might have gone the other way before the Belgian took the third, 6-3. Still, for an Asian to reach a Grand Slam final was big news, and the attention it brought down on Li’s head was so intense and unnerving that her focus—and game—went off a cliff even as her endorsement earnings exploded.

Li wasn’t heard from again in any meaningful sense (she won just one match in her next five tournaments) until Madrid, where she prefigured her French Open success with a strong semifinal finish. After Li’s triumph at Roland Garros, she swooned yet again—if not quite as badly. A loss to power-serving Sabine Lisicki at Wimbledon is no crime, but Li was unable to get out of the second round anywhere else either, until the week before the U.S. Open.

It was too late for Li to regain her confidence and composure; she lost in New York in the first round to No. 53 Simona Halep, and played just one other event (Bejing, l. in round one to Monica Niculescu) before the ill-fated WTA Championships, where she had a good win over Sharapova but then crumbled against Azarenka and was blown out by Stosur.

The only mitigating circumstance: Stosur has Li bamboozled, and is 7-0 against her Chinese rival. Those things happen.

See for Yourself

Li has a low center of gravity and an efficient game with extremely compact swings. Her mobility and balance make it a joy to watch her at work. Here are the highlights of her win over Sharapova at Roland Garros.

The Last Word

Time certainly is not on Li’s side, yet when you consider what a hero she’s become in China—and throughout the rest of the world—it’s pretty clear that anything else from here on in is just icing on the cake. The big question is whether that will make her more or less dangerous. And that becomes a matter of her desire and zest for the game.

—Peter Bodo

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