Hometown Heroes Dominate Courts

One of the pleasures of the Olympics is to revel in performances from athletes you've never heard of before. When multimillionaire professionals like tennis' Williams sisters share in the Olympic limelight, it's heartening that they want to represent their nation. But while the participation of such mega-stars can sometimes take away from the achievement of lesser-knowns, homegrown talent may have the upperhand in women's tennis this year. Six days into the Beijing Games, both Serena and Venus had exited, the older sister dispatched by none other than China's own Li Na, 7-5, 7-5.

Her surprise win leaves it looking likely that the Chinese women may garner an Olympic medal from tennis, either from women's singles player Li or women's pair Yan Zi and Zheng Jie. Li, hardly a household name overseas, survived a treacherous draw that pitted her against both world No. 3 Svetlana Kuznetsova and Williams, who won Wimbledon this year. Certainly, the support of a raucous home crowd helped buoy the 25-year-old Chinese athlete, who is ranked No. 42 in the world. "Wow, I don't think you could see that in another country," said Li of the support from the local audience. "This is the first time the Olympics were in China...and that was a lot of motivation."

Crowd support was also crucial for the Chinese women's pair, who started their quarter-final match at 1:00AM on Aug. 16. The late match, punctuated by swirls of flying nocturnal insects, pitted Yan and Zheng against Russia's Dinara Safina and Kuznetsova in a nearly three-hour battle (6-3, 5-7, 10-8). Safina must have been exhausted: Less than four hours earlier, the Russian had dispensed with Serbia's Jelena Jankovic in an epic women's single's quarter-final.

The women's tennis schedule continues in an unrelenting fashion. Safina plays Li again in a women's singles semi-finals on Aug. 16 at 4:00PM, just 12 hours after she and her Russian partner lost to the Chinese pair. Zheng and Yan meet Spain's Anabel Medina Garrigues and Virginia Ruano Pascual later in the evening in a doubles semi-final match.

China's success so far in women's Olympic tennis — coming close on the heel's of Zheng's strong performance at this year's Wimbledon — is a relatively recent phenomenon. In China's more vehemently socialist days, tennis was frowned upon, viewed as a marker of capitalist excess. (Any sport in which a major tournament has English nobility sampling strawberries and cream on the sidelines hardly bespoke of communist equality.) But China has changed, and a decent backhand is now considered de rigueur among many progeny of the Chinese elite. There's also the matter of international glory: Like dozens of other sports, tennis was targeted by the country's sports czars as a possible manufacturer of gold medals and world titles. In the 1990s, China poured money into tennis, siphoning off promising players, like Li, from an already dominant badminton program.

The plan seems to be working. In the 2004 Athens Games, a Chinese women's pair brought home a surprise gold. Two years later, at the Australian Open, Yan and Zheng claimed the country's first Grand Slam title. Then came Wimbledon, when the diminutive Zheng made it to the semi-finals as a wildcard before succumbing to the younger Williams sister. Zheng, a native of Sichuan province, which was rocked by the May earthquake, donated her Wimbledon prize money to the reconstruction effort.

Chinese tennis players may be making their mark globally, but the sport's finicky etiquette was still a mystery to many of the Chinese fans who won a ticket lottery to watch Olympic tennis this month. Before a match at the tennis venue, an Olympic volunteer wandered through the crowd, explaining to Chinese audience members that they should not clap during points and that flash photography was not permitted. (Foreign fans were not treated to a refresher course in tennis manners.)

But if the etiquette is still getting there, tennis fever has officially arrived. Stars like Spain's Rafael Nadal and Switzerland's Roger Federer — both big sports celebrities in China —received enthusiastic ovations from the crowds at the Opening Ceremony. Instead of holing up in a luxury hotel, Nadal is staying at the Olympic Village, fielding dozens of requests from other athletes to have their pictures taken with him. And the Chinese tennis players are meriting their share of attention at home, too. Zheng, who could stroll the streets of the capital unrecognized a couple years ago, now requires a bodyguard. And Li's Aug. 16 upset of Venus Williams has made the highlights reel of Chinese Olympic T.V. In Beijing, it seems these hometown heroes aren't so different from the Williams sisters, after all.