Zheng Jie's notes
View: Full | Compact
Glowing from her newly won Beijing bronze yesterday, Chinese doubles ace Zheng Jie said it was the "Sichuan spirit" in the wake of the May 12 quake that fueled her to her podium finish in what she called the most important tournament of her life.
"People always ask me what kind of message I want to deliver to the people who suffered from the quake," said Zheng, who teamed with Yan Zi to beat Ukraine's Alona and Kateryna Bondarenko 6-2, 6-2. "The Sichuan people sent us more messages because during the disaster, they were so brave, they were positive, they never gave up. I am proud to be someone from Sichuan.
"During the Olympic Games, we fought really hard and we want to show this Sichuan spirit, that we are brave."
Chinese sports authorities have implored all their athletes to play with the same Sichuan spirit, said China's deputy Chef de Mission Cui Dalin, who believes the never-say-die attitude of the residents of the quake-hit area can boost his athletes' winning desire.
Zheng turns out to be a perfect example. She needed nearly three hours to overcome an early deficit to oust world No 15 Agnes Szavay 4-6, 6-3, 7-5 in the first round, and then rallied to beat Nuria Llagostera Vives of Spain 6-7 (7), 6-1, 6-4 just 15 hours later.
Her epic doubles victory over Svetlana Kuznetzova and Dinara Safina in the quarterfinals, which ended at 3:50 am on Saturday, was also a performance of heroic proportions.
Zheng said the Sichuan spirit will encourage her for the rest of her career.
"My home people will be with me forever," she said. "The spirit will be my motivation throughout my career, I will never forget about it.
"We were playing games in Italy on the day when the earthquake hit. We were really shocked and it was a lot of pain for all Chinese people, so I hope I can bring them some joy by playing here at the Olympics. Also, I want to say 'thank you' to those who supported me on court and cheered me on in the Sichuan dialect."
Despite being unable to match the accomplishment of Li Ting and Sun Tiantian at the Athens Games and win another gold, the Zheng and Yan's tenacious play won them high praise.
"I am proud of the girls because we won by luck four years ago, but today we won by our own strength," said national team head coach Jiang Hongwei.
"Zheng and Yan became the enemies of the world after winning two Grand Slam titles in 2006. All of our rivals know how we play, and they started researching our tactics to beat us. That's why I'm happy to see them win bronze here as they got it from their persistence."
Chinese tennis chief Sun Jinfang praised the duo's mindset as well.
"I used to worry about the weak mentality of our current athletes," Sun said. "But Zheng and Yan's play was awesome. I am pleased to see my players play this tough."
Singles' player Li Na, meanwhile, did not demonstrate the same kind of mental toughness, losing to Vera Zvonareva of Russia 6-0, 7-5 in her battle for bronze.
The 26-year-old from Hubei struggled from the beginning and didn't show the form that helped her beat Russian Svetlana Kuznetzova and Venus Williams in earlier rounds.
Li admitted she had lost motivation after losing to Safina in the semifinals.
"I didn't want to play this match, it cannot bring me excitement," she said. "I cannot make myself concentrate on this match, so I don't think it was a good result."
Source: China Daily
"People always ask me what kind of message I want to deliver to the people who suffered from the quake," said Zheng, who teamed with Yan Zi to beat Ukraine's Alona and Kateryna Bondarenko 6-2, 6-2. "The Sichuan people sent us more messages because during the disaster, they were so brave, they were positive, they never gave up. I am proud to be someone from Sichuan.
"During the Olympic Games, we fought really hard and we want to show this Sichuan spirit, that we are brave."
Chinese sports authorities have implored all their athletes to play with the same Sichuan spirit, said China's deputy Chef de Mission Cui Dalin, who believes the never-say-die attitude of the residents of the quake-hit area can boost his athletes' winning desire.
Zheng turns out to be a perfect example. She needed nearly three hours to overcome an early deficit to oust world No 15 Agnes Szavay 4-6, 6-3, 7-5 in the first round, and then rallied to beat Nuria Llagostera Vives of Spain 6-7 (7), 6-1, 6-4 just 15 hours later.
Her epic doubles victory over Svetlana Kuznetzova and Dinara Safina in the quarterfinals, which ended at 3:50 am on Saturday, was also a performance of heroic proportions.
Zheng said the Sichuan spirit will encourage her for the rest of her career.
"My home people will be with me forever," she said. "The spirit will be my motivation throughout my career, I will never forget about it.
"We were playing games in Italy on the day when the earthquake hit. We were really shocked and it was a lot of pain for all Chinese people, so I hope I can bring them some joy by playing here at the Olympics. Also, I want to say 'thank you' to those who supported me on court and cheered me on in the Sichuan dialect."
Despite being unable to match the accomplishment of Li Ting and Sun Tiantian at the Athens Games and win another gold, the Zheng and Yan's tenacious play won them high praise.
"I am proud of the girls because we won by luck four years ago, but today we won by our own strength," said national team head coach Jiang Hongwei.
"Zheng and Yan became the enemies of the world after winning two Grand Slam titles in 2006. All of our rivals know how we play, and they started researching our tactics to beat us. That's why I'm happy to see them win bronze here as they got it from their persistence."
Chinese tennis chief Sun Jinfang praised the duo's mindset as well.
"I used to worry about the weak mentality of our current athletes," Sun said. "But Zheng and Yan's play was awesome. I am pleased to see my players play this tough."
Singles' player Li Na, meanwhile, did not demonstrate the same kind of mental toughness, losing to Vera Zvonareva of Russia 6-0, 7-5 in her battle for bronze.
The 26-year-old from Hubei struggled from the beginning and didn't show the form that helped her beat Russian Svetlana Kuznetzova and Venus Williams in earlier rounds.
Li admitted she had lost motivation after losing to Safina in the semifinals.
"I didn't want to play this match, it cannot bring me excitement," she said. "I cannot make myself concentrate on this match, so I don't think it was a good result."
Source: China Daily
July 3, 2008
By HOWARD W. FRENCH
SHANGHAI — As a child athlete, Zheng Jie was always looked down upon — literally — for her diminutive size, passed by in favor of the taller, faster girls that China’s tennis establishment thought were the answer to the burgeoning arms race in the women’s game, where power and size have been the trends for a generation.
When players were selected for training in the United States, or for other marks of confidence from a state sporting system that tightly controls the destinies of most athletes, Zheng was always left standing in the wings, treated as an insufficiently promising second fiddle to bigger girls like Peng Shuai and Li Na.
“She was really upset because she knew that she was no worse than the others in terms of her skills,” said Chen Yuwen, a former coach of Zheng’s on her native Sichuan’s provincial team. “We had to counsel her, and I told her frankly there was nothing wrong with the nation wanting the best athletes to be trained, and that physique was an important factor they had to take into account.”
Over the years, the 5-foot-4 ½ Zheng became used to being consoled in this way, but she never let it dull her competitive fire. In the end, she took inspiration from another coach’s advice. He told her that her best strategy would be to always be ready to compete, in case a sudden opening came about.
“You might not be among the great hopefuls, but you can make yourself available when they need you,” the coach told her. Another coach gave her a picture of Michael Chang, the relatively short American who won the French Open in 1989, for encouragement.
The biggest opening of Zheng’s career materialized last week at Wimbledon, when she was offered a wild-card entry into the women’s singles bracket despite being ranked No. 133 in the world.
The 24-year-old Zheng has made the most of the opportunity, counterpunching a succession of bigger players into submission — including the newly ranked No. 1 player, the 6-foot-2 Ana Ivanovic, who could find few answers for Zheng’s deep, flat ground strokes and superior court coverage in a third-round match last Friday.
Zheng won that encounter, 6-1, 6-4, in one of the biggest upsets in recent memory. Expectations have been rising as Zheng has made victories over much bigger — and far higher-ranked — women appear increasingly routine.
Next up for Zheng is a semifinal match Thursday with Serena Williams, a two-time Wimbledon champion who, with her sister Venus, helped popularize the push for greater size and strength in women’s tennis.
“Anything is possible,” the China women’s coach, Jiang Hongwei, was quoted as saying in an interview published Wednesday by the news service sina.com. “We shouldn’t be scared by big names."
Jiang spoke of his player’s achievement “changing the history” of Wimbledon, presumably meaning that it is the farthest a Chinese woman has gone in a Grand Slam, and is only the second time a wild-card player has reached the women’s semifinals in the Open era.
Zheng’s performance is already being called a psychological boost for China as the Olympics draw near and as proof of the merits of the country’s sporting system.
“The victory shows our players that if you can adjust your mentality and approach the game calmly, forcing your opponent to make mistakes, then you can make a miracle happen,” Gao Shenyang, the deputy director of China’s national tennis center, said in an interview with sina.com.
It is also sure to deepen the popularity of a sport with shallow roots in this country.
“It’s the most popular elective sport in Chinese universities, with lots of students turned away for lack of space,” said Fu Rao, an adviser to the national team who teaches tennis at Shanghai University of Sport. “Lots of my students are teaching privately. From my point of view, many of them aren’t qualified trainers, but the market demand is there.”
Zheng’s generation is the first in China to have benefited from a serious effort to develop tennis talent. The effort has proceeded in the same top-down, minutely planned way common to many other sports in China, in which the country seeks to leverage its huge population, picking potential stars from the crowd, then investing heavily in their development.
In tennis, this so-called whole nation system weeds as many as 2,000 prospects from provincial teams down to the four or five players who constitute the national team. Zheng had made this prohibitive cut, but as a doubles player, paired with Yan Zi, her partner from Sichuan since she was 7.
The pair won the Wimbledon doubles title in 2006 and carry a heavy burden of expectation in defending China’s gold medal in women’s doubles in the Beijing Olympics. People close to the tennis establishment here say that the national coach was less than thrilled with Zheng’s breakthrough Wimbledon quarterfinal victory over Nicole Vaidisova, viewing it as less significant than her loss that same day in doubles.
Even before Wimbledon, Zheng had developed a strong reputation for gritty determination. She sat out the second half of last year after ankle surgery but worked hard to retool her serve before she resumed play.
Her mother, Lei Zhibin, said in a brief telephone conversation that Zheng carried a tiny bottle with her containing bone fragments from her injured ankle.
Why?
“So that she can encourage herself whenever she has difficulties, after all those pains,” her mother said.
Whatever the outcome for Zheng against Williams, the results have come far more quickly than expected for women’s tennis in China.
“Seven or eight years ago, you could not imagine that we’d have a girl in the last four of a Grand Slam,” said Chen Yuwen, Zheng’s former coach in Sichuan. “When the National Tennis Center decided to develop women’s tennis late in 2000, it was hard enough for us to imagine someone in the top 100.”
Li Zhen and Fan Wenxin contributed reporting, and Zong Zijuang contributed research.
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
By HOWARD W. FRENCH
SHANGHAI — As a child athlete, Zheng Jie was always looked down upon — literally — for her diminutive size, passed by in favor of the taller, faster girls that China’s tennis establishment thought were the answer to the burgeoning arms race in the women’s game, where power and size have been the trends for a generation.
When players were selected for training in the United States, or for other marks of confidence from a state sporting system that tightly controls the destinies of most athletes, Zheng was always left standing in the wings, treated as an insufficiently promising second fiddle to bigger girls like Peng Shuai and Li Na.
“She was really upset because she knew that she was no worse than the others in terms of her skills,” said Chen Yuwen, a former coach of Zheng’s on her native Sichuan’s provincial team. “We had to counsel her, and I told her frankly there was nothing wrong with the nation wanting the best athletes to be trained, and that physique was an important factor they had to take into account.”
Over the years, the 5-foot-4 ½ Zheng became used to being consoled in this way, but she never let it dull her competitive fire. In the end, she took inspiration from another coach’s advice. He told her that her best strategy would be to always be ready to compete, in case a sudden opening came about.
“You might not be among the great hopefuls, but you can make yourself available when they need you,” the coach told her. Another coach gave her a picture of Michael Chang, the relatively short American who won the French Open in 1989, for encouragement.
The biggest opening of Zheng’s career materialized last week at Wimbledon, when she was offered a wild-card entry into the women’s singles bracket despite being ranked No. 133 in the world.
The 24-year-old Zheng has made the most of the opportunity, counterpunching a succession of bigger players into submission — including the newly ranked No. 1 player, the 6-foot-2 Ana Ivanovic, who could find few answers for Zheng’s deep, flat ground strokes and superior court coverage in a third-round match last Friday.
Zheng won that encounter, 6-1, 6-4, in one of the biggest upsets in recent memory. Expectations have been rising as Zheng has made victories over much bigger — and far higher-ranked — women appear increasingly routine.
Next up for Zheng is a semifinal match Thursday with Serena Williams, a two-time Wimbledon champion who, with her sister Venus, helped popularize the push for greater size and strength in women’s tennis.
“Anything is possible,” the China women’s coach, Jiang Hongwei, was quoted as saying in an interview published Wednesday by the news service sina.com. “We shouldn’t be scared by big names."
Jiang spoke of his player’s achievement “changing the history” of Wimbledon, presumably meaning that it is the farthest a Chinese woman has gone in a Grand Slam, and is only the second time a wild-card player has reached the women’s semifinals in the Open era.
Zheng’s performance is already being called a psychological boost for China as the Olympics draw near and as proof of the merits of the country’s sporting system.
“The victory shows our players that if you can adjust your mentality and approach the game calmly, forcing your opponent to make mistakes, then you can make a miracle happen,” Gao Shenyang, the deputy director of China’s national tennis center, said in an interview with sina.com.
It is also sure to deepen the popularity of a sport with shallow roots in this country.
“It’s the most popular elective sport in Chinese universities, with lots of students turned away for lack of space,” said Fu Rao, an adviser to the national team who teaches tennis at Shanghai University of Sport. “Lots of my students are teaching privately. From my point of view, many of them aren’t qualified trainers, but the market demand is there.”
Zheng’s generation is the first in China to have benefited from a serious effort to develop tennis talent. The effort has proceeded in the same top-down, minutely planned way common to many other sports in China, in which the country seeks to leverage its huge population, picking potential stars from the crowd, then investing heavily in their development.
In tennis, this so-called whole nation system weeds as many as 2,000 prospects from provincial teams down to the four or five players who constitute the national team. Zheng had made this prohibitive cut, but as a doubles player, paired with Yan Zi, her partner from Sichuan since she was 7.
The pair won the Wimbledon doubles title in 2006 and carry a heavy burden of expectation in defending China’s gold medal in women’s doubles in the Beijing Olympics. People close to the tennis establishment here say that the national coach was less than thrilled with Zheng’s breakthrough Wimbledon quarterfinal victory over Nicole Vaidisova, viewing it as less significant than her loss that same day in doubles.
Even before Wimbledon, Zheng had developed a strong reputation for gritty determination. She sat out the second half of last year after ankle surgery but worked hard to retool her serve before she resumed play.
Her mother, Lei Zhibin, said in a brief telephone conversation that Zheng carried a tiny bottle with her containing bone fragments from her injured ankle.
Why?
“So that she can encourage herself whenever she has difficulties, after all those pains,” her mother said.
Whatever the outcome for Zheng against Williams, the results have come far more quickly than expected for women’s tennis in China.
“Seven or eight years ago, you could not imagine that we’d have a girl in the last four of a Grand Slam,” said Chen Yuwen, Zheng’s former coach in Sichuan. “When the National Tennis Center decided to develop women’s tennis late in 2000, it was hard enough for us to imagine someone in the top 100.”
Li Zhen and Fan Wenxin contributed reporting, and Zong Zijuang contributed research.
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
