PARIS — Below Roland Garros’ Courte Centrale, as the groupies, the Francesca Schiavone fans in their black shirts, intense coaches and breathless handlers mingled in the usual chaotic scene, a young woman – beaming and beautiful – walked in. Li Na — with her usual disarming simplicity and no-frills charm, approached her new coach, Dane Micheal Mortensen. The two hugged, sharing the emotion of her 6-4, 7-6(0) triumph over Schiavone. “I am so happy,” Mortensen whispered. ”What you have done is so fantastic.”
No kidding. In the 134 year history of Grand Slams, no one in the in the vast Asian expanse South of Russia — from Turkey to Japan — had ever won a major title. Vijay Amritaj excelled. Kimiko Date-Krumm reached No. 4. But there were no Slam winners. In fact, tennis in China was known more for curious oddities then big stage victories. In the movie “The Last Emperor,” we see the young monarch playing mixed doubles when soldiers invade the Inner Kingdom to end centuries of monarchy. Mao Tse-tung played tennis on his storied “Long March.” The now obscure Hu Na defected during a Fed Cup match in Northern California in ’83. Michael Chang, who we saw pictured on the Great Wall of China, proved to be a singular pioneer, and the Chinese emerged to win the doubles in the '04 Olympics.
That was all prelude for a moment in Paris. A championship in the world’s biggest women’s sport; a global triumph by a player who had been struggling for months and was now on a surface, clay, which she thought was only good for exercise. A rather old competitor, 29, with a new coach of five weeks, she found herself, after a memorable afternoon, embracing a new feeling. The Chinese flag was flying above the French stadium. Tears were flowing in Asia. When IT asked Li Na, a former journalism student, what she would write about the win, she said, “Dream come true.”
After all, she’d undergone an epic journey. Her father, who dreamed to be the Chinese national badminton champion, made her play the sport because she was “young and fat.” But she didn’t like it, and she switched to tennis and left home early to train. Her dad died when she was 14. Even now, her mom doesn’t watch her matches. Quite the pioneer, she insisted on choosing her own coaches and bolted from the Chinese Tennis Association that kept 92 percent of her earnings. She quit for two years to go to school. She had three knee operations and said, “If I have a fourth, I will retire.” When she finally emerged to reach the Australian Open final, the world learned she was just enchanting; a candid person of some substance gifted with a devastating, unfiltered sense of humor.
When asked how she beat Victoria Azarenka in Melbourne, she deadpanned, ” Because I a am better player.” Asked why she plays tennis, she said it was “for the money.” After one big win, she insisted that she would go shopping no matter what her husband says. And speaking of her husband, she confided that before the Aussie Open final, “I didn’t have a good evening. My husband slept like this SSHHHS. I woke up every hour.”
Now in the Roland Garros final, it was her hour once again. She had brushed aside three powerful foes – No. 9 seed Petra Kvitova, No. 4 seed Azarenka and No. 7 Maria Sharpova – all big hitters who could have won here.
Then, in the final, she was an underdog to Schiavone — the only minted-for-clay elite WTA player since Justine Henin. Experts told us that Li Na – athletic and imposing – was fine against other powerballers. But against the crafty slice-and-dicer from Italy – good luck. The defending champion who last year at the French Open had crushed Na (losing just six games) knew how to bring it in Slam finals and, with her movement and guile, would surely dismantle her opponent.
Wrong.
From the start, Na unleashed a startling display of first-strike, power tennis. Just 5-foot-7, Na is not a big, imposing woman like many an Eastern Eur0. But she has strong legs and a powerful upper body. Told by her coach that “it was just a tennis match, but an important one,” she seemingly drew from her experience. She was calm and apparently oblivious to pressure. Often moving forward, she put on a forehand clinic – crosscourt, down-the-line or to the body, deep and accurate – it didn’t matter. She dominated her smaller, more emotional opponent. The (“I Kiss the Clay”) ecstasy we had often seen on Schiavone’s fantastic elastic face was gone. Instead, there were many a grimace — substantial pain. And she was talking to herself, often a bad sign.
So Schiavone, the bold risk taker, never could gain control or establish a rhythm. Often hitting off her back foot, she struggled just NOT to be blown away and once broken in the fifth game of the first set, she began a long, frustrating climb just to catch up.
With the Italian down a set and a break, we seemed to be on the brink of a blowout. But Na finally blinked. She hit four bad forehands in the eighth game of the second set and Schiavone offered a dance when she broke back to even the struggle. Then, as she raised her game and took risks, she seemed to be on the ascendance. Up 6-5 and just two points from forcing a third set, a Li Na backhand was called good. Schiavone was incensed. She bent over the line, insisting time and again to the ump the call had been blown.
Later, Schiavone offered a lyrical if elliptical explanation: “ If the ball is out, I call out. Steal the ball [no]…If the ball is in, is in. That's what they teach me from when I was young, and that's what I want to teach in the future… to the kids. So if I call the ball out, the percentage that I mistake, it's really, really low. So if you explain me this is the mark and this is out and you explain me really the sign, I can believe you. But that ball, [it was out] no.”
Always an emotional player who’s in the moment, the controversy took the wind out of her Italian sails. Fans craved a third set, a classic match. But Na swept to a 6-0 lead in the tiebreak and thought, “Don’t do something stupid.”
She didn’t.
Forcing a backhand error, the first Asian Slam champion fell to her back. Her convincing, runaway win meant that Chinese tennis would be moving forward like never before. China’s “journey of a thousand Slams” ended with a triumph of single player with a fierce forehand and a big smile. Clearly, it was a triumph which mirrors today’s geo-political landscape. Soon the skies above Paris would roar as if asking whether the tennis landscape was to be altered by a land in the East of 1.7 billion souls.
