Opinion

Chinese tennis has stalled since Li Na won French Open; Wang Qiang’s Tokyo 2020 stance shows unwillingness to ‘fly solo’

Name: China’s Li Na enters International Tennis Hall of Fame
Uploaded: 2021-06-19T01:00:00.000Z
Duration: 2 min 8 s
Description: China’s Li Na enters International Tennis Hall of Fame

Chinese No 2 Wang Qiang skips Wimbledon to focus on Tokyo 2020 – ‘Representing my country at the Olympic Games is the highest honour’

Attitude at odds with two-time slam winner, who has fallen out of favour back home despite success on court

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Li Na kisses the championship trophy after defeating Dominika Cibulkova of Slovakia at the 2014 Australian Open. Photo: AP

Jonathan White

Formerly of the South China Morning Post, Jonathan White has written about sport from China for nearly 15 years, and covered the Beijing 2008 Olympics, the Fifa World Cup in Brazil in 2014 and the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.

Published: 9:00am, 19 Jun 2021Updated: 9:43am, 29 Jun 2021

It seems an apt marker for Chinese tennis that a decade on from Li Na’s breakthrough moment winning the French Open, the paucity of players that have followed Asia’s first slam singles champion was made clear.

As a wide-open field saw four debutant slam semi-finalists become a final between Barbora Krejcikova and Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, China’s players were nowhere to be seen.

Five entered the first round at Roland Garros and all five were sent packing by the end of the second round.

By the time the final was being played, most of China’s players were already getting knocked out of the Viking Open in Nottingham as they made the swing to the grass court season.

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China’s Li Na enters International Tennis Hall of Fame

There were two exceptions. China No 1 Zhang Shuai did not lose until the final, where she was beaten by British No 1 Johanna Konta. No shame in that, of course, but a shame that Zhang could not win.