by Pete Bodo
PARIS—When Li Na finally rolled back over onto her side and picked herself up off the clay, the back of her white tennis shirt caked with the damp, red, top-dressing of this, the most famous clay court in the world, she ran to the net, leaving behind the racket that had served her so well this fortnight. She shook hands with the woman she had just defeated for the French Open championships, Francesca Schiavone.
The only thing missing from their damp, clay-stained palms at that moment was a baton. In this game, you're not supposed to win your first major at the age of 29. But that's just what Schiavone did last year, enchanting all who witnessed her improbable but artful and ultimately convincing drive to the victory podium. The only thing less likely this year than a successful defense by Schiavone was the prospect of someone duplicating her feat, and that's just what Li did.
Schiavone lost her French Open crown today, but the miracle—it's an overly dramatic noun, but I can't think of a better one—was passed on, and it lives on, under the stewardship of Li. Miracles are a little like snowflakes; no two are alike. And if Schiavone's triumph here last year was a tale in which the largest role was played by inspiration, Li's win at Roland Garros was one in which the dominant theme was perseverance.
"Today is the dream come true," Li said shortly after the trophy presentation following her 6-4, 7-6 (0) win. "Like I was a young player, I want be the Grand Slam champion. But today. . . Someone saying I'm getting old. So, you know, the old woman like the dream come true. Not easy."
The most difficult part for Li today, tennis-wise, occurred midway through the second set, after she set herself up beautifully to complete a crisp, air-tight destruction of the defending champion's hopes. Li broke Schiavone to start the second set and managed to hold onto that advantage until she served at 4-3. At that point, Li could just about smell the victory, which is often when a player is most vulnerable to panic. She buckled there, playing a wretched game; you could see that she even had trouble taking a free, natural swing at the ball.
Four consecutive, egregious errors by Li produced the break for Schiavone, who was back on even ground. But Li would not collapse, even though she was still slightly haunted by the way she lost her focus in the Australian Open final a few months ago—a letdown that resulted in a loss to Kim Clijsters. The break also gave Schiavone a rush of adrenalin, and she held the next game easily. But Li did a terrific job holding her next two service games, when a break in either would have given Schiavone the set. Once Li reached the safe haven of the tiebreaker, she was unstoppable, reeling off seven straight points to seal victory.
"I mean, in Melbourne I was the first time in the final," Li said later. "Of course you didn't have any experience before. You come one time final already, and you know what to do in this time." Switching back to that moment of crisis today, she explained, "And for tennis, like 4-3 for the serve means nothing, because the chair umpire didn't say, Game, set, match. So both players still have chance. Of course I was nervous. I mean, come to the final and so many people watching you. I mean, yeah. But is good. Finally I can win the match."
It's hard to overstate what a disadvantage it's been for Li to come to tennis from China, a nation with virtually no tradition in the sport, and it's easy to underestimate how long Li has had to keep plugging away, trying to figure out how to get where she was today—lofting a Grand Slam singles trophy, beaming.
Li came to tennis, a sport that was utterly unfamiliar in China at the time, at age 9. Her father, Sheng-Peng, was a good badminton player who had to stop, and he hoped Na would follow in his footsteps, perhaps become national champ one day. "But I was so fat. Too fat," she recalled, "My parents take me to tennis then. We go and look at a tennis court. They ask me, 'What do you think?' I said, 'It's okay.' I had no chance to watch anybody play on television (when I started). But we had magazines, and I took the posters out and put them on the wall."
Li was confident, and the Chinese federation set store by her. But she felt deep down that she had been pushed into the game, and that bothered her even as she became a world-class player. Li lost her father to illness when she was 14, but she continued to play. And to smolder. She graduated to the ITF circuit and by age 20 she was in the Top 200. But in April of 2002 she suddenly pulled the plug and quit the tour for two years. She returned home to study journalism at the Huazhong Institute of Science and Technology, but returned to the tour in the spring of 2004—and promptly won four consecutive ITF events in China.
