The Best American Sports Writing 2014 (36 page)

Li said she didn't see the
People's Daily
editorial. Rodriguez forbids her, as best he can, from reading media coverage during tournaments, and Jiang acts as sentry to shield her from articles that might affect her mood. Still, when the coverage stings, Jiang tries to soothe her. “We Chinese have a saying: ‘For any hero, half will compliment, half will slander,'” he said. “I tell her to forget the attacks, the pressure, the expectations. But it's hard to forget. We're only human.”

Li tried to be lighthearted when I asked her about the Chinese press: “In the past, I used to be really bothered by [bad stories]. Now I just think that perhaps [the Chinese media] think that I'm not famous enough, so they want to help me out.” Her laugh sounded hollow.

Li has become a lightning rod in China, provoking a conversation about the role of freedom—and patriotism—in sports and society. When the editorial came out, her fans angrily defended her right to be herself in an online debate that consumed Chinese microblogs. “At the beginning, I would be affected by everybody's expectations, but I came to realize that people were just projecting their own dreams onto me,” she said. “I'm not a saint. I too am an ordinary person. I have my ups and downs. So all I can do is focus on doing my job well.” She added: “I really, truly think that I am just an athlete. I can represent nothing but myself.”

 

More than a year into what Li calls her “first retirement,” in 2003, the new head of China's state tennis program, a former volleyball star named Sun Jinfang, visited her in Wuhan. As Li remembered the meeting, Sun said: “I have heard from many people that there was a Li Na who played very well, but she suddenly quit. So I decided to come see for myself.” At 22, Li was reveling in the joys of ordinary life for the first time: taking university classes in journalism, freely pursuing her relationship with Jiang, even playing a stint of intramural tennis with classmates who had no idea who she was.

“Why don't you play for yourself?” Sun asked her. The question surprised Li. No other official had ever spoken to her this way. But it wasn't clear what “playing for yourself” meant in a system that managed every aspect of players' lives—from dictating the coaching, training, and tournament schedule to taking 65 percent of players' earnings. Even so, in early 2004, Li put her academic plans on hold (she would eventually graduate five years later) and headed back to the court, unencumbered by a WTA ranking or outsize expectations.

That year, she became the first Chinese player to claim a WTA title by winning a tournament in Guangzhou as a qualifier. By 2006, she had climbed into the top 25 in the world, but to break into the top 10, Li believed she needed the freedom to manage her own career, something only a few Chinese athletes, such as the former NBA star Yao Ming, had ever been offered. That freedom wouldn't be granted before the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the pride-fest in which the supremacy of the Chinese sports system—its 51 gold medals topped the Americans' 36—was meant to mirror the rise of the nation.

With a Chinese flag affixed to her red Nike outfit, Li made an unexpected run to the semifinals, seemingly untroubled by the knee surgery she had undergone just months before. The local fans cheered her so wildly—even in the middle of points—that at one stage she yelled, “Shut up!” Li regretted the outburst, but reflected later: “Chinese people needed a victory so badly to prove ourselves. I used to think tennis was simply a sport, but the craziness of that match made me realize that it was endowed with meanings that are far more significant.”

Once the Games ended, Li said she issued Sun an ultimatum: “I told her, ‘If I have no freedom, I'm going to quit.'” Another young player, Peng Shuai, had been making similar demands. Whether to avert the desertion of her top stars or to help them realize their potential (as it was later presented), Sun soon introduced a policy called
danfei
, or “fly solo.” Under the new rules, Li, Peng, and two others would still have obligations to the national and provincial teams, but they would be allowed to hire their own coaches, set their own schedules, and keep a far greater percentage of their earnings. Instead of giving 65 percent of her income back to the federation and her provincial team, Li now pays between 8 and 12 percent, even as she bears the cost of travel, training, and coaching. For China—and for Li's career—this was a radical change.

Flying solo was scary at first. “Jiang Shan and I made plans for the worst-case scenario, where our savings would be reduced to zero,” Li said. She'd never had to deal with the minutiae of finances or logistics before, since the state had done everything for her. But the benefits soon became indisputable. In 2010, with Jiang as her coach, Li reached the semifinals at the Australian Open and broke into the world's top 10 for the first time—just as she had vowed so improbably a decade before. A year later, she swept all the way to the Australian final, charming fans with her verbal volleys as well as her ground strokes. Asked to describe what motivated her back-from-the-dead semifinal victory over top-seeded Wozniacki, she said: “Prize money.”

The date that changed everything for Li—and for the global landscape of tennis—was June 4, 2011. There were no memorials in China that day for the protesting students who were massacred around Tiananmen Square exactly 22 years earlier. But 116 million Chinese fans—nearly double the population of France—gathered around their television sets to watch Li defeat the defending champion, Francesca Schiavone, for the French Open title.
LI NA, WE LOVE YOU!
read the banner on the screen of national broadcaster CCTV, while a presenter raved: “A miracle, a breakthrough, a first in more than 100 years of tennis!” The Chinese website Sohu Sports calculated that the victory would net Li 234 times the annual earnings of an average Chinese worker. “But she absolutely deserves it!”

Stunned by the size of the Chinese audience, the WTA ramped up its plans for expanding its presence in Asia while top brands rushed to sign endorsement deals with Li. With Rolex and Nike already signed up, her agent, IMG's Max Eisenbud (who also represents Sharapova), struck multiyear deals with Mercedes-Benz, Samsung, and Häagen-Dazs, among others, pushing Li's total annual earnings to more than $18 million.

But fame and fortune seemed to disorient Li. She lost early in nearly every other event that year, and failed to make the quarterfinals in six consecutive majors. Last summer, at her request, Eisenbud put together a list of coaches from which she could choose. One of them was Carlos Rodriguez, an Argentine who had guided Justine Henin her entire career, including 117 weeks as world number one, and had recently opened a tennis academy in Beijing. “I told Max immediately, ‘Him, him!'” Li recalled. “I thought if he could make Justine a champion . . .” She made the Montreal finals the first week they worked together in August 2012, and then won the Masters in Cincinnati the following week, her first tournament victory in 15 months.

 

On a muggy afternoon this past July, Li Na's quads were burning. It wasn't the heat, exactly, though the temperature at her training base in Beijing hovered around 94 degrees. Nor was it the torturous workout she'd endured so far: half an hour of running, jumping, and agility drills; an hour of rapid-fire core and upper-body training in the gym; then two 90-minute sessions on court, honing her fitness and footwork—and an attacking game she is sharpening for the U.S. Open.

The burning sensation came from the deep sand Li was churning underfoot—part of a beach-volleyball court that Rodriguez has turned into a terrain of pain at his sprawling tennis academy called Potter's Wheel. For 45 minutes, Rodriguez pushed her through a series of lunging exercises in the sandpit, giving her only 30 seconds of rest in between (not coincidentally, almost the same amount of time a tennis player is allowed between points). The day before, during a timed cycling session, Li had screamed, “I'm on the verge of dying!” Today, after a set of lunging volleys in the sandpit, she bent over her aching legs, her entire body soaked in sweat, and exclaimed, “Now I think I'm actually dying.”

At five feet eight inches tall and 143 pounds, Li has an almost perfect body for tennis: agile feet, pistonlike legs, and a sculptured core and upper torso. “I'm as fast and strong as I've ever been,” Li said earlier that day, as she hunched over a full plate of rice, eggplant, pork, and tofu at the academy's cafeteria. “It just takes me longer to recover than when I was younger.” As Li finished off her food, Jiang dumped several spoonfuls of a high-energy protein powder into a bottle of water and shook it vigorously. “It tastes terrible, but I have to drink it every day,” she said, grimacing as she forced it down.

The dozens of young tennis players eating at the tables around us were under strict orders not to bother Li. But a trio of boys, 12 or 13 years old, kept sauntering by, stealing glances at the small stud earrings that ringed Li's upper lobe and her tanned forearms, glaring white strips marking where her wristbands normally were. (The rose tattoo on Li's chest, which caused such a controversy in China when she got it at age 19 that she covered it up during televised matches, was hidden under her T-shirt today.) After she cleared her tray, separating plates and utensils just like all the other players, one of the boys sidled up to her. Li smiled and posed for a photo, but there was little small talk. She only wanted to get to her dorm room upstairs for a quick nap before another grueling afternoon with her coach.

Rodriguez is the ultimate guru, with an intellectual approach to the physical and psychological aspects of the game. Despite his gentle demeanor, his training regimen is so relentless that when Li began in earnest last winter, she told Jiang: “How did Justine continue with Carlos for 15 years? I was ready to die after just three days.” Returning midseason to this kind of training, Rodriguez believes, will help Li avoid a late-season slide. “Li Na has the resources for two more years at the top,” Rodriguez said. “The only question mark will be her motivation at the end of the season.”

For now, at least, Li seems invigorated to be adding new dimensions to her game. At one point during practice, Rodriguez had Li stand on one leg on a wobbly pedestal near the net, cracking volleys without losing her balance. Coming to the net behind forceful approaches, Rodriguez says, will help her end points more quickly (key for a veteran) and add an element of surprise. “I was reluctant at first,” Li said. “But if I don't try it now, perhaps I'd regret it when I retire. As Carlos told me, ‘Without trying, you'll never know how good you can be.'”

A glimpse of that future may have come on Wimbledon's Center Court, during Li's quarterfinal match against Radwanska. Her net-rushing tactics earned Li four set points in the opener. She served an ace on one of them, but when it was called out, she neglected to challenge, and the set went to the Polish player. Li battled back to win the second set before finally succumbing in the third. When a reporter asked Li if she wanted to know the correct call on the serve that would have won her the set—and perhaps the match—she stared in disbelief. “Was it in?” she asked.

Still, Li had a right to seem upbeat afterward. This was the first time since 2010 that she had reached the quarterfinals at Wimbledon—fulfilling a goal that Rodriguez had set for her—and the lifelong baseliner charged the net an astonishing 71 times in the quarterfinal match, winning 48 of those points. “Many people maybe thought I was mad, coming up to the net again and again,” she said. “But I'm glad I was brave enough to try something new.”

 

Sinking into her white Mercedes coupe after a day of training, Li Na craved one thing above all: a massage. The manicure, the shopping, the spicy Sichuan meal: all those little luxuries would have to wait while her aching body got pounded and kneaded back into some semblance of normalcy. “When I was growing up, I never got a massage, never needed one,” Li said, as Jiang maneuvered into Beijing's snarled late-afternoon traffic. “But now, anything less than a 90-minute massage and I won't be able to walk tomorrow.”

From the car, Li rang up the spa at their five-star hotel and was told that the early-evening slots were all booked. It would have been easy for Li to mention her name, but she enjoys a little anonymity, especially in China. Their suite was registered under a pseudonym, so she left the spa their room number. “Yesterday, the receptionist said, ‘You know, you look a bit like that tennis player.' Later, when she found out, she said: ‘No way! But you're so skinny in person!'” Li threw her head back and laughed.

The question of retirement looms over Li. Among the world's top 30, only Serena Williams is older—by five months. Relaxing on a rumpled single bed in her dorm room at Rodriguez's academy, Li laughed when the subject of age came up. “I didn't like tennis for the first 15 years I played,” she said, as Jiang, carrying an armful of dirty clothes, asked if there was any more laundry for him to do. “But now, when I'm finally at a stage where I'm enjoying my tennis life, everybody keeps asking me when I'm going to leave.”

Age may be a subject Li avoids, but she makes no secret about wanting children—and becoming “a housewife trailing after my husband.” The couple recently began renovating their three-story villa in Wuhan, where her mother and his parents still live. While Li trained in Beijing, Jiang flew down to shop for curtains and light fixtures, emailing her photos for approval. (When Li objected to the $10,000 price tag on one designer fixture, Jiang replied that it was the cheapest one he'd been shown.) If motherhood comes, Li is adamant that her offspring would not pursue a tennis career. “It's too painful,” she said.

In the state-run Chinese system, Li “never heard a single positive word in a decade or more,” Rodriguez told me, noting that she can still turn that negativity, at low moments, into a corrosive form of self-loathing. Henin was once psychologically fragile too, he said. But he worked with her from age 13; Li, at 31, has a fully formed character shaped, in large part, by the Chinese sports system and her reaction to it. “When I ask how she's doing, she almost never mentions anything good. I have to force her to tell me also what she is doing right.”