Relaxed, smiling, soft-spoken, Li is evidently enjoying retirement and raising a family – her daughter Alisa is four and her son Sapajou is three – with her husband and former coach and sparring partner Dennis Jiang Shan. Family is number one for her these days, but tennis is not trailing far behind either.

Besides getting an EMBA from the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business in Beijing, where the Wuhan native now lives, Li has spent the past few years trying to set up the Li Na Academy, a tennis school which she hopes will be a “playground for people who love tennis to be happy and play the sport”.

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“When I started playing tennis, I didn’t have such a place and that’s why I hope to start one for young players,” she says. She had initially thought the place would be up and running by now, but has encountered difficulty in finding a suitable place for the school. “I will definitely see it through, but now I think it will take a little longer.”

The desire to work with China’s youth to help them achieve their tennis dreams is not surprising, given that her success on the Grand Slam and WTA courts has seen tennis grow from a relatively unknown sport in mainland China to one that is played by more the 14 million people. It’s also why she has been working with Rolex to promote the Road to Wimbledon, a series of tournaments around the globe where the individual winners from each country get to play in the finals at the All England Club.

Motherhood is a giving her a great training platform for her plans to work with young players, even though she finds it more challenging than facing down the likes of Serena Williams and Francesca Schiavone.

“As a professional player, I only had to make sure I did my part well and the team would take care of everything else. Children won’t listen to you or behave the way you want them to. They have their own thinking,” she says with a laugh.

“Nobody knows instinctively how to be a good parent. I feel that parents and children actually grow up together. Just because you’re an adult doesn’t mean you’re right all the time.”

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Still, she is adamant she will not be following in the footsteps of Kim Clijsters, who recently announced her comeback, even though there are things she misses about her previous competitive life.

“I miss challenging myself on the courts. In real life, when things get too tough, you can choose to walk away. On the courts you cannot do that. No matter who your opponent is, the person you have to fight is yourself.

“But one thing I don’t miss is waking up in the mornings and not knowing where you are because you spend the week travelling and changing hotels,” says Li, who now tries to avoid travel for long periods if her family cannot be with her.

Coming next year is a film of her life story, adapted from her autobiography Li Na: My Life and made by award-winning Hong Kong director Peter Chan Ho-sun, who also recently directed her in a commercial for Mastercard.

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The commercial shows her in a touching scene where she imagines meeting her late father – who died suddenly when she was 14, and whom she didn’t get to say goodbye to – and hearing his approval for all her achievements. Her “performance” won praise from pundits and her 23 million Weibo followers.

“That wasn’t really acting; it was my own story. Peter just moved me to a different setting and let me be myself. I would go crazy if you asked me to go into acting as a profession,” she laughs, brushing aside any idea of a future on the big screen.

For now, she’s quite happy to be spending her days getting her daughter ready for school, doing housework and looking after her son. Li’s future is firmly entrenched in the next generation – hers and the nation’s.

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