When Li Na steps on to court at Wimbledon, few will be rooting for her harder than the 13-year-old Song Nanxi. Li's victory at the French Open – where she became the first Chinese player to win a grand slam singles title – has made her a heroine to compatriots. "I was hugely inspired … Li Na is my model and there is so much to learn from her," said Song, of the Jiujiang Tennis Club, who won Jiangxi province's junior doubles title last year. "Before, my friends did not really know about tennis, but now they do and many want to learn to play."
The sport is counting on the 29-year-old Li to accelerate its development in China, where a growing middle-class is learning to love watching and playing tennis. "Sometimes this kind of experience will influence a whole generation," said David Jiang of China's Sports Illustrated, noting the surge of excitement and patriotic pride.
The state broadcaster, CCTV, said 116m Chinese viewers watched the final of the French Open, almost doubling the previous high, for the Australian Open final when Li Na lost to Belgium's Kim Clijsters. Li was even plastered across the front of the staid official Communist newspaper, People's Daily, a privilege almost always reserved for the most senior leaders.
Terry Rhoads, of the Shanghai-based sports consultants Zou Marketing, who first met Li when she was in her teens, believes her win has captured the interest of people who normally have no interest in sport. "Chinese fans absolutely adore world champions. You can be a national champion and people won't pay that much attention but, if you can be the best in the world, it breaks right through," he said.
Tom McCarthy, whose Beijing International Group promotes grass-roots and elite tennis, points out that her success follows other important landmarks such as China's first Olympic tennis gold medal in 2004 and its first grand slam title in 2006, when Zheng Jie and Yan Zi took the women's doubles at the Australian Open.
They are among the reasons that the number of what he calls "real" players – who pick up their rackets more than once a week – has risen from one million in 2005 to 8m today. The Women's Tennis Association notes that there are 90,000 courts, with the number increasing by 15% a year. But good equipment and coaching are still expensive – and beyond the reach of most Chinese families – and Maggie Rauch, editor of the China Sports Today, suggests cultural factors hold back sport in general. "[Given] the focus on culture and testing and the hours you have to put in with tennis, you have to have unusual parents who see the value of that," she said.
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