China has won its first ever Wimbledon trophy with a three set victory by Yan Zi and Zheng Jie over veteran duo Virginia Ruano Pascual and Paola Suarez in the womens’ doubles.
The fourth-seeded Chinese pair made history by destroying their opponents 6-3, 3-6, 6-2 in a game lasting two hours and eight minutes. They will share £205,280 in prize money.
Zheng Jie summed up their achievement after the game. “We are very happy and proud to be the first Chinese Doubles Champions at Wimbledon”, she said, “It has been a very good year for us and we hope to keep winning more titles in the future.”
Zheng Jie has every reason to be happy and proud – the Wimbledon win takes her career prize money earnings to over $1 million.
Their Wimbledon success follows their impressive performance in the Australian Open in January of this year when they became the first ever Chinese players to win a Grand Slam competition.
Zheng Jie and Yan Zi are not alone in raising the profile of Chinese tennis players internationally. Li Na managed to battle her way to the quarter-finals of the women’s singles competition before conceding defeat to Belgium’s Kim Clijsters.
It seems that winning gold medals in the 2004 Athens Olympics has stimulated the development of Chinese tennis, in particular women’s tennis.
Gu Jue from Shanghai TV explains, “The Chinese government invests more in women’s tennis because they have to choose a way to make improvements, but men’s tennis is much more competitive. It’s much easier to make improvements in women’s tennis.”
With six Chinese women playing in this year’s Wimbledon, surely it is only a matter of time before the men make their mark too.
