10-year rewind: Li Na’s glittering moment in Paris

Charismatic, captivating, trailblazing. Pile on superlatives, but in reality it’s difficult to describe what Li Na really means to tennis. Her larger-than-life personality defied definition, as did her achievements. 

Li’s penchant for opening horizons and smashing through boundaries was just a fraction of the allure of a Chinese tennis champion that played – and lived – on her own terms. 

A decade ago at Roland-Garros, the world watched in glee as Li claimed her maiden Grand Slam title on the Parisian clay. 110 million were glued to the television broadcast – in China alone – and today we still feel the far-reaching impact of this breakthrough moment.

She opened doors for tennis, expanded its influence into China and beyond and opened millions of fresh eyes to the sport. 

Most important, she did it with style, humour and a rare talent for creating poetry in the pressroom and on the court. 

"They're all great tennis players on the tour," WTA Insider Courtney Nguyen explained to rolandgarros.com. "What separates them, at least for me in the way that I've come to tennis, is the personality, is the charisma, do they draw me in to their matches, to their results, to their tournaments, to their lives and careers? That's something that Li Na definitely did for me. 

"She just, I don't know, she enraptured me, I was so, so fascinated." 

Li was one of a kind, and a beacon of light for younger generations who now hope to trace her footsteps on tour. 

“The way she played and how she was, she always looked like she was having fun on the court, which sometimes you don't really see anymore,” American Ann Li, who is Chinese American said last week in Paris.

“She was a great player and a great person too, so she's inspired me like that. Just seeing her on TV when I was younger I thought it was really cool. Because you didn't see many Asian players – now a lot more are coming up, which is good." 

One small step for Li Na, one giant leap for tennis. Like Neil Armstrong’s famous moonwalk in 1969, Li’s footprints in the terre battue represent a seachange for the sport – a moment of endless possibility. 

“The Chinese tennis has changed a lot since she won the French Open,” says Wang Qiang, who is currently the top-ranked Chinese player on the WTA Tour. “We all think that if she can do it, maybe we can do it.” 

An unlikely champion on the surface that favoured her deft baseline game the least, Li never made any bones about the fact that clay wasn’t really her thing. 

After defeating Petra Kvitova in the round of 16, Li simplified her challenge to the media, who wanted to know how she was having success in Paris, a place where she had only played four times previously, and only surpassed the third round once. 

"I don't like clay courts, but I'm still in the quarter-finals,” she said. “For a professional player, if you don't like the arena, the weather, the surface, you still have to play the match. You have no choice. You have to challenge yourself to play."

Kvitova looks back on Li’s run favorably, despite the loss. 

“I was very happy that she won. I always love her, as a player, as a person,” she said last week in Paris. “We are still in touch.”

Three matches later, after a victory over Victoria Azarenka in the quarter-finals and Maria Sharapova in the semi-finals, Li would find herself hoisting the Coupe Suzanne-Lenglen. Victorious over 2010 champion Francesca Schiavone in the final, tennis’ tectonic plates had shifted.

It was a magical moment for tennis and for tennis’ Asian community. 

"Just from a personal side, there's somebody who looks like me doing something I never thought would be done," Nguyen said. "To see Li Na play a very powerful brand of tennis, to do it at Roland-Garros, to do it on clay, to beat a pure clay-courter in Francesca, I just did not think that I was ever going to see that in my lifetime." 

History had been made. Tennis had its first Asian-born Grand Slam champion. But Li could hardly believe it. 

“The next day, Sunday morning, I woke up and I asked my husband – is it real, or a dream?” she said. 

Ten years later, with Li now a card-carrying member of the International Tennis Hall of Fame, it’s no coincidence that the WTA hosts its season-ending championships in China, where the largest prize money payout in tennis history – men’s or women’s – was handed out in 2019. 

"For me personally it's always that Billie Jean King catchphrase: you have to see it to be it,” says Nguyen.

“And in that moment the world just shifted on its axis. I can still see the match point, Li Na falling to the ground as Schiavone's ball goes long and thinking: everything changes. And I'm not sure that tennis understood how much things were going to change seismically, to have an Asian-born, specifically Chinese, tennis pioneer and Grand Slam champion.”