Li Na (born 26 February 1982) is a Chinese former professional tennis player. She was ranked world No. 2 in women's singles by the Women's Tennis Association, achieved in February 2014. Li won nine WTA Tour-level singles titles, including two majors at the 2011 French Open (defeating the defending champion Francesca Schiavone) and 2014 Australian Open. She is the first major singles champion born in Asia, male or female. Li was also the runner-up at the 2011 Australian Open, 2013 Australian Open, and the 2013 WTA Tour Championships.
A trailblazer for tennis in China, Li was the first Chinese player to win a WTA Tour title (at the 2004 Guangzhou International Women's Open), the first to reach a major singles quarterfinal (at the 2006 Wimbledon Championships) and final, and the first to break into the world's top ten. By 2013, her accomplishments had made her the most successful Asian tennis player of her time, landing her on Time magazine's list of 100 Most Influential People in the World. Former world No. 1 Chris Evert wrote there: "Tennis has exploded in China. The country now has some 15 million tennis players; 116 million watched Li win the French Open. That kind of exposure is crucial to our sport, and it never would have happened without Li."
Li retired from tennis in September 2014, at age 32 as the reigning Australian Open champion due to injury complications. In 2019, she was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame, becoming the first Asian player to receive this honor.
At age six, Li followed her father's footsteps and started playing badminton, which honed her reflexes. Just before she turned eight, Li was persuaded to switch to tennis by coach Xia Xiyao of the Wuhan youth tennis club. Her instructors taught tennis through negative reinforcement, which affected Li's confidence in later years. Li joined China's National Tennis Team in 1997. The following year, Li, sponsored by Nike, went to John Newcombe Academy in Texas to study tennis. She studied there for ten months and returned to China. Growing up, her favourite tennis player was Andre Agassi. She turned professional in 1999 at the age of sixteen.
At the end of 2002, Li left the national tennis team to study part-time at Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST), where she completed her bachelor's degree in journalism in 2009. The Chinese media cited various reasons for this. Some reported that the relationship between her and her teammate and future husband, Jiang Shan (姜山), was opposed by the national team's management, some reported that her coach, Yu Liqiao (余丽桥), was too strict and demanding, while other reports claimed that her request for a personal coach did not go through. However, some regarded that it was just the health problem leading to the retirement. The New York Times reported that one of the reasons was that a team leader wanted her to play through by taking hormone medicine as Li struggled with her performance due to hormone imbalance. She later told CNN that she had felt sick every day and didn't want her life to be only for tennis.
Li returned to the national team in 2004 to "give back" for their help during her earlier career. On January 27, 2006, Li married Jiang Shan who then became her personal coach. Li quit the national team as well as the state-run sports system in 2008 under an experimental reform policy for tennis players. This change was called "Fly Solo" (单飞) by Chinese media. As a result, Li had the freedom to hire her own coaching staff and she would be solely responsible for the cost of training and coaching and tour expense. She could keep more of her winnings, with only twelve percent of her winnings going to the Chinese Tennis Association development fund as opposed to 65 percent previously. In the summer of 2012, the requirement of contribution to the Chinese tennis development fund was lifted and Li kept all her prize money.
On 5 June 2016, Li was commissioned by Special Olympics as a Global Ambassador.
1999–2002: Dominance on the ITF Circuit
Li turned professional in 1999, and won three of the first four singles tournaments she entered on the ITF Circuit, two at Shenzhen and one at Westende, Belgium. She also won all of her first seven ITF doubles tournaments she entered.
In 2000, she won 52 singles matches on the ITF Circuit, more than any other player, notching another eight tournament titles, including one at the $50k level, two at $25k, and a run of four $10k tournament wins in March and April.
Notable individual victories in the course of the year included wins over Flavia Pennetta, Emmanuelle Gagliardi, Maria Elena Camerin, Tamarine Tanasugarn and Yayuk Basuki.
In June, after Li's world ranking had risen to No. 136 on the strength of her ITF performances alone, she gained direct entry into her first WTA Tour event at Tashkent. Despite winning the first set, Li lost her first WTA singles match to Anna Zaporozhanova in three sets, but she captured the women's doubles title at Tashkent with Li Ting against Zaporozhanova and Iroda Tulyaganova.
By the end of 2000, Li had won four WTA Tour singles matches, this brought her cumulative ITF singles title count up to eleven. That year, she also won seven more ITF doubles events, six of them with Li Ting.
Li was mostly absent from the tour in 2001. She further won two $25k singles tournaments, defeating Roberta Vinci in the final at Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and Liu Nannan in the final at Guangzhou in July, but then played only one further match for the rest of the year, leading her ranking to fall to No. 303 by the year's close.
She won her 15th career ITF doubles tournament at Hangzhou in March.
In 2002, she came through qualifying to win her first $75k singles tournament at Midland, United States in February, defeating Laura Granville, Tatiana Perebiynis, and Mashona Washington en route to the title, the 14th of her career. But she then played only one more match (a loss to Zuzana Ondrášková in the $50k event at Dinan, France that April), followed by a lengthy absence from the circuit for the next 25 months.
Sources vary as to the causes of this absence, the Chinese media mostly cited the conflict between her and the China's National Tennis Team's administration and coaching staff. Some claimed that she just wanted a break from professional tennis so she could concentrate on her studies at university.
2004–2005: Successful return to professional tennis