She's the first Chinese woman to reach the quarter-finals of a Grand Slam, with a three set win over Vaidisova. Well done! :D

Didn't see the match myself though...

Wasn't she once not allowed to get to wimbledon because the chinese held their own national championships in the same week as SW19?

Yep, it happened last year - all the Chinese players missed Wimbledon.

Thankfully, that has been changed :)

What a great tournament for Na li. She's beaten a top 10 player and now a top 20 player back to back, and you cant ask for more than that really. A dream tournament for the chinese woman who couldnt compete last year due to the chinese national Games. Thank god that's changed, as it's given a chance for these superb chinese women to put themselves on the map at the biggest tournament in the world.

Li hits such a great ball. When she's striking the ball well, the hitting can be pretty destructive as her timing is quite exceptional, even if she's having an off-day. like all the chinese players so mentally disciplined that even if things arent working out, they just acess their technique and grit their teeth and play. From reports i saw today of her match, she actually broke down the vaidisova forehand with long forehand exchanges. Risky play, but obviously playing well to do so. All in all another great grass-court performance.

She plays Clijsters next, and i fully believe she has a shot there against the number 2 seed. She'll have to keep the errors down and utilise her serve well( probably the weakest area of her game) and just trust her shots, and prey on the clijsters weaknesses. The Chinese women are very good at preying on their opponents weaknesses and can change their game-plan to exploit them.

Li na, whatever the result tomorrow has made history and can hold her head up high.

Hey dl :)

Well I think Clijsters will have yet another straighforward win tomorrow, she dismissed Jie Zheng pretty easily, she'll know what to expect having played Jie Zheng, even if Na Li is probably the most talented of the Chinese trio...

She handled Radwanska well today also, strong, steady progress from Kim :)

Yep maybe Dav, but i get good vibes from Li, she wont suffer Kim lightly. Li has troubled top players before e.g. Serena in Melbourne, Kuzzy at RG and to an extent Davenport at the US Open. It would be good to see Clijsters tested before the seemingly inevitable battle of the Belgians, where i feel clijsters will have too play her best to win. Clijsters's easy wins may not be adequate match practice for when it gets tough, so for Li to give her a good test would be more sufficient match-play against Justine.

Oh I agree with you on the Davenport match dl! :o

I was watching that in a bar in the States, and I was on the edge of my seat, well, my bar stool :lol:

Li's backhand was giving Linds all sorts of trouble, Lindsay really had to hold her nerve, especially in that second set...

As for this match, on paper it looks tight, but Kim has a habit of quashing potentially good match-ups, the usual 6-3 6-2 job I'm expecting :rolleyes:

Yes it is great for Li Na. Wish I had seen it, damned BBC di dnto have that choice on interactive. My only concern about the Chinese players form what I have seen is that they are not very inspiring ad interesting, but they sound determined enough. I do hope she beat sClijsters and spares us another all Belgian semi. I think Clijsters has had far too easy a draw and has not been tested. Let's see someone new play JHH in the semis please.

Tell you what, in those teams competitions on the BBC I was tossing up between Li and Peer and went fo rPeer based on seeding and Fo performance. Wish I had had li now. roflmao

I've seen Na Li play before, and have to say that I was quite impressed. Strong off both wings, good clean hitter, and quick around the court.

Maybe you could say that she is very technically correct and therefore no surprise at being a product of some very efficient tennis system in China.. could be a fair comment.

I took the afternoon off today to catch some of the matches, incuding (I hoped) the Na Li v Vaidisova and Myskina v Jankovic games. And neither of them were on!! I was well peeved at that. Wasn't quite so keen on watching Sharapova, and Fed barely had to break sweat in his match.

I wish that sometimes that the beeb would show good matchups as well as just the big names, y'know?

Yeah you're probably right Dav, a reason i'm not a fan of kim is her almost trivial way in which she deals with her opponents. It's almost as if she just wants to win in about 40 minutes, so she can have dinner :rolleyes:

I hope Li puts in a good show, she has the tools to punch a few holes in Kim's game, particulary if Kim's forehand goes off. As i said before, the chinese are drilled and taught to expose weaknesses in the tennis training, so Kim better be sharp or she's gonna have to work.

Li has to be consistent though. I saw her matches with Kuznetsova in Paris & Wimbledon and the main difference was that Li cut down on the errors at Wimbledon.

I agree with you about Kim though DL - There seems to be no joy in her tennis anymore, it's like she just wants to get off the court as soon as possible - like she's already thinking ahead to the next stage in her life.

I don't think there is any doubt anymore that she is very very serious about retiring at the end of next year.

Can someone clarify her name for me. On her matches it says her surname as Li (for example, when she played Kuzzy, the scoreboard said Kuznetzova vs Li), so i assumed she was called Na Li-but the commentators keep calling her Li Na!!! Do Chinese people put there names back to front or something? :blink: Or are the commentators wrong? :wacko: :wacko: Please help me out guys, its driving me mad :)

in china the family name is written first: na. her given name is li. therefore you say her name as: li na but write it as: na li. so the commentators are correct. clear?

i've been following her path of destruction all year and call her "the chinese chainsaw." she's so aggressive on court. in a good way. constantly giving dirty looks to her coach. going down a set and break just seems to make her play better. she's an amazing competitor really.

the one thing about her though is that her anger reaches a tipping point and becomes a negative. then her game can go downhill rapidly. i have a feeling that kim will push her beyond that tipping point.

Thanks Flame :kiss2:

I agree :ok:

EVERY Nadal, Fed, Hewitt match has bene on, as has every Sharapova match. The women's coverage has been terrible really. Fair enough to show the defendign champion, as in Fed/Venus but nto Shra and Nadal in easy matches.

The people want to see the new generation of players that will be leading the sport for the next few years SB, that's all :D

Well clijsters won in straights............how suprising(!) :rolleyes:

Li really should've pushed that match to a third set, she was utilising her forehand and extremely accurate baseline game in the 2nd set to great effect, but some really crucial errors at key times. She couldnt really trust her shots or her own game-plan, especially at the net, where she was bluff more than anything, not actually fully comitting to a volley. I think clijsters played well, but she knew she was lucky to win in the manner she did. 5-2 and set point down, she really did have to capitalise on the Li errors, as towards the conclusion of the match, the baseline exchanges were mainly being won by Li. As i said not enough fluency or consistency in li's game today. Very sporadic performance. However she has had a truly excellent tournament and has made history. it'll be intresting to see how her game progresses on the American hardcourts which i think suit her game better with the higher bounce, and how she'll fare at the last remaining GS.

bad luck today li, but congrats on a worthy performance :ok:

What like Hewitt? roflmao

Utter crap. My friends are sick of Sharapova or Nadal being on and want to see something else. Even Venus geoig out did nto get covered at the expense of crap scehduling, now that is scandalous. Vaidisova is a new player, as is Na Li so how come we hardly saw them? Every time I was tryign to find a women's match I could not find a decent one or one withotu Sharapova. Have you heard that she is actually putting viewers off? :D

Yep, agree with that. :ok:

I wish they wouldnt show all of Federer's matches myself, he's like the BBC's number 1 viewing proirity it seems, and it would be better to see more lesser players play where it is still both entertaining and competitive.

I agree, but I can see why they might with Fed as he is defending champ after all. But here is no reason why they cannot switch matches is there, according to how they are progressing. I mean there were soem five set men's matches that sounde dgreat, liek the Lopez one, and yet we had Hewiit, Nadal or Roddick I think that day. I watch every day, and I have to say that the most covered players apart form Fed have been Nadal, Hewitt and Sharapova. And at the start fo course we had Roddick until he went out.

I agree :ok:

From what I saw, Li's cross court forehand really is excellent; she strikes the ball very cleanly, with compact swings. She seemed nervous when 5-2 up, resulting in errors, but that was very understandable. It's been a great tournament for her though, and hopefully she'll be able to transfer her form over to the hard courts.

I just hope we don't get a semi-final as dismal as the RG one :rolleyes: