As promised in my last post, here's a profile of tennis player Zheng Jie, who stunned spectators at Wimbledon on July 1 when she became the first Chinese player ever to reach the semi-finals of a Grand Slam tournament:

Name: Zheng Jie (郑洁)
Age: 25 (dob: July 5, 1983)
Hometown: Chengdu, Sichuan Province
Olympic Medals Previously Won: None 

    Immediately after I wrote a Red Star entry about how Chinese athletes have been delivering disappointing performances in the last couple of months, Zheng Jie came out of nowhere and made me eat my words. Well, she didn't exactly come out of nowhere, but you'd be forgiven for thinking as much after reading this NYT article about the up-and-coming tennis pro.

    In reality, Zheng first basked in Grand Slam glory when she and partner Yan Zi won the ladies' doubles competition at the Australian Open and then again at Wimbledon in 2006. Later that year she captured two gold medals at the Asian Games in Doha, Qatar in women's singles and doubles competition (read about other notable Chinese athletes who shone at the '06 Asian Games here and here). So the international tennis community was already aware of her considerable talents before she dazzled on Wimbledon's notoriously tricky grass courts.

    But 2007 proved to be a difficult year for Zheng. She and partner Yan Zi failed to defend their doubles title at the Australian Open, succumbing to Taiwanese duo Yung Jan Chan and Chia Jung Chuang in the semi-finals. Then she suffered a debilitating ankle injury at the French Open that eventually required surgery and forced Zheng to withdraw from all other events for the rest of the year. Her international ranking suffered accordingly, dropping to 163 by the end of 2007.  Several strong showings in the early months of 2008 allowed her to climb back to 133 in the world, but she still needed to petition Wimbledon officials for a wild card berth in June.

    Perhaps it was her underdog status that allowed Zheng to surprise competitors at Wimbledon and breeze through the early rounds, defeating Slovakian Dominika Cibulkova in the first and Great Britain's Elena Baltacha in the second. But no one could have predicted the epic ass-whooping she handed first seed and World No.1 Ana Ivanović in the third round, winning 6-1 6-4 (in fact, she'd previously faced and almost defeated Ivanović in 2006 at a WTA event in Montreal). Next, number 15 seed Ágnes Szávay of Hungary fell in the fourth, and finally number 18 seed Nicole Vaidisova of the Czech Republic went down under Zheng's racket in the quarterfinals.

    Though she eventually lost to Serena Williams, her on-court accomplishments were certainly inspiring, and expect tennis to experience a significant boost in popularity on the Mainland as a result. It is interesting to note (and indicative of China's emphasis on the group over the individual) that Zheng's coach (and husband) Zhang Yu, himself a famous Chinese tennis player, tempered any praise of her performance in the singles competition with sharp criticism of her poor play in doubles competition, where Zheng and Yan Zi lost to Ekaterina Makarova of Russia and Selima Sfar of Tunisia in the third round.

    Regardless, be sure to keep an eye on Zheng as she vies for gold in both singles and doubles competition at the Olympics in August. In the meantime, the athlete-turned-humanitarian plans to spend the next few weeks helping build houses for the victims of the magnitude-7.9 earthquake that struck the area south of her birthplace in Sichuan on May 12. She's already donated all of her prize money from the French Open and Wimbledon to relief efforts and says that the dead and displaced will serve as an inspiration to her in future competitions.