China’s Zheng Jie makes tennis history
Posted on July 7, 2008
Filed Under WTA
Born in Sichuan, the earthquake-ravaged province in China, Zheng Jie is the first Chinese player to reach a Grand Slam semifinal, and the most successful wild card competitor in Wimbledon’s history.
Zheng Jie’s first memory of tennis was watching a match between Graf and Seles. Her older sister started playing first, which influenced Jie to take up the game at 10. Zheng Jie graduated from St. Chuan Sports Academy in June 2000 and made her WTA rankings debut in the same year. She turned professional in 2003 and ended the year for the first time in the top 100.
Zheng has won three career WTA singles titles: Hobart 2005, Estoril 2006 and Nordea Nordic Light 2006. She has reached one Grand Slam semifinal (The Championships, Wimbledon, 2008) which is her best performance. In addition, she has won eleven WTA doubles titles, all with Yan Zi, including two Grand Slams: Australian Open, and Wimbledon, both in 2006.
Her height is 164 cm; she weights 57 kg and is a right-handed player. Her favorite shot is backhand. Her favorite color is blue, favorite flowers are roses and favorite cuisine is Chinese.
Singles Career
In May 2002, she won two successive $25,000 ITF singles tournaments, at Shanghai and Tianjin, right after reaching her first $50,000 tournament quarterfinal, at Fukuoka, Japan. That September, she gained direct entry into a WTA tournament at Shanghai, and reached Round Two before losing to Anna Kournikova. She ended the year as World No. 183.
Wimbledon 2006
At Wimbledon, Zheng and Max Mirnyi, seeded two, reached the semifinals of the Mixed Doubles, where they were beaten by Bob Bryan and Venus Williams 7-5, 7-5. She triumphed in women’s doubles with Yan Zi over Virginia Ruano Pascual and Paola Suarez 6-3 3-6 6-2, capturing China’s first Wimbledon title. With her win, she became the first Chinese tennis player to amass over 1 million dollars in career earnings.
Wimbledon 2008
Despite being ranked as low as number 133 in the world, preventing her from directly qualifying for the Wimbledon Ladies’ singles main draw, Zheng was given a wild card into the main draw, where she defeated seeded Slovakian Dominika Cibulkova in the first round, then Great Britain’s Elena Baltacha in the second. She then went on to defeat the first seed and World no. 1 Ana Ivanovic in the third round, dominating the match relentlessly and winning 6?1 6?4. This was her first victory against a top 10 player. Zheng beat Agnes Szavay of Hungary, the number 15 seed, 6?3, 6?4 in the fourth round, and defeated number 18 seed Nicole Vaidisova of the Czech Republic 6?2, 5?7, 6?1 in the quarterfinals. This was Zheng’s best singles result in a grand slam tournament and made her the first Chinese women’s tennis player ever to reach the semi-finals of a grand slam, surpassing the previous record of a quarter-final finish set by her compatriot Li Na at the same event in 2006. She also became the first wild card to reach the semi-finals of the ladies’ singles at The Championships, Wimbledon. In the semi-finals, Zheng lost to two-time Wimbledon champion and former No. 1, Serena Williams 6-2, 7-6. Zheng could not effectively counter Serena’s extremely strong serves, but tended towards having the upper hand in rallies in the second set, and earned a set point on Serena’s service at 5-6 30-40 in Zheng’s favour, only to strike a risky drop shot into the top of the net following an unexceptional second serve by Serena, thus forfeiting her only chance to level the match.
She will donate her prize money from the tournament to and spend time helping the victims and post-reconstruction effort of the May 12 earthquake that killed nearly 70,000 people and left 5 to 10 million homeless in her home province Sichuan. She did the same with her French Open prize money earlier in the year.
In August 2008, Zheng Jie is expected to compete for China in both singles and doubles in the Beijing Olympics.
Comments
Leave a Reply