Zheng Jie

Zheng Jie

Zheng Jie at the first round of Australian Open 2005
Country	China
Residence	Chengdu, Sichuan, China
Date of birth	July 5, 1983
Place of birth	Chengdu, Sichuan, China
Height	5' 4/5in (1.64 m)
Weight	126 lbs. (57 kg)
Turned Pro	January 16, 2003
Plays	Right; Two-handed backhand
Career Prize Money	$1,210,998
Singles
Career record:	195-108
Career titles:	3 (4 ITF titles)
Highest ranking:	No. 27 (August 14, 2006)
Grand Slam results
Australian Open	1st (2004, 2005, 2006)
French Open	4th (2004)
Wimbledon	3rd (2006)
U.S. Open	2nd (2005)
Doubles
Career record:	199-79
Career titles:	7 (16 ITF titles)
Highest ranking:	No. 3 (July 10, 2006)
Infobox last updated on: July 10, 2006.

This is a Chinese name; the family name is Zheng

Zheng Jie (郑洁) (born July 5, 1983) is a Chinese professional female tennis player. She was born in Chengdu, Sichuan, China. She made her WTA rankings debut in 2000. She turned professional in 2003 and ended the year for the first time in the top 100.

Currently, Zheng is the highest ranked Chinese Women's Doubles players at the rank of 3.Zheng has won three career WTA singles titles: Hobart 2005, Estoril 2006 and Nordea Nordic Light 2006. In addition, she has won seven WTA doubles titles, all with Yan Zi: Hobart and Hyderabad (both 2005), as well as the Australian Open, Berlin, Rabat, 's-Hertogenbosch, Wimbledon and New Hevan (all 2006).

2002

In May 2002, she won two successive $25,000 ITF singles tournaments, at Shanghai and Tianjin, right after reaching her first $50,000 tournament quarterfinal, at Fukuoka, Japan. That September, she gained direct entry into a WTA tournament at Shanghai, and reached Round Two before losing to Anna Kournikova. She ended the year as World No. 183.

2003

In 2003, she qualified for Hyderabad and took a love set against Mary Pierce in the main draw first round, only to lose the match in three. She also qualified for Doha, but then lost to Lina Krasnoroutskaya. Later in the year, she defeated Nuria Llagostera Vives in the first round of a $25,000 ITF tournament, Alyona Bondarenko in the first round of qualifying for Palermo, and Maria-Elena Camerin at another $50,000 ITF event in July, where she reached the quarter-final; but it was in August at Bronx that she won her first $50,000 tournament, beating a cast of future stars in the forms of Shenay Perry, Jamea Jackson, Akiko Morigami, Adriana Serra Zanetti and (in the final) Maria Kirilenko to this end. Although Kirilenko avenged this defeat in qualifying at the U.S. Open, Zheng proceeded to qualify for Bali in September with crushing victories over Yan Zi and Yuka Yoshida, then vanquished Flavia Pennetta 6-3 6-2 in the first round of the main draw before bowing out to Tamarine Tanasugarn. However, the very next month she defeated Tanasugarn at the Japan Open, where she reached her first WTA semi-final before losing to Maria Sharapova. At the end of October, she reached another WTA quarter-final at Quebec City with a second-round win over Antonella Serra Zanetti before losing in three sets to Laura Granville. In December, she was a losing finalist at two successive $50,000 tournaments, falling in three sets to countrywoman Peng Shuai at Changsha (after victories over Sesil Karatantcheva, Camille Pin and Aiko Nakamura) and, also in three sets, to the same Sesil Karatantcheva (after beating Sun Tiantian in the semi-final) at Shenzhen. These impressive results catapulted Zheng into the World Top 100, bringing her a year-end ranking of 93.

2004

2004 brought some further improvements in her singles results. She reached the quarter-finals at Hyderabad and Doha (where she comfortably beat Jelena Dokic in Round Two), and the second round at Miami and Vienna (where she beat Lisa Raymond 6-3 6-2). Then at the French Open, playing only her second Grand Slam singles main draw (after gaining direct entry to the Australian Open but losing in the first round), she defeated Dally Randriantefy, Emilie Loit and Tathiana Garbin in succession to reach the fourth round, where she lost to Paola Suarez in two close sets, 4-6 5-7. At the Olympics in Athens, she lost 6-8 in the final set of her first round match to Ai Sugiyama despite taking the first set 6-4. In September, she won a $25,000 ITF tournament at Beijing, defeating Yan Zi in the semi-final and Li Na in the final. But it was another of her countrywomen, Peng Shuai, who stopped her at the final hurdle in a $50,000 tournament at Shenzhen late that November, although she had impressively conquered Yan Zi again in the semi-final, the latter having accounted for Li Na in the quarter-final stage. Zheng ended the year world-ranked 67.

2005

In 2005, she began the year with a flourish by capturing her first WTA singles title at Hobart, after wins over some highly capable players, namely Mariana Diaz-Oliva, Shinobu Asagoe, Klara Koukalova, Na Li and Gisela Dulko. She qualified for Dubai with wins over Sandra Kleinova, Maria-Elena Camerin and Virginia Ruano-Pascual, and went on to defeat Anabel Medina Garrigues in the main draw before succumbing to Lindsay Davenport. Dulko gained her revenge in the quarter-final at Estoril in April. But Zheng remained in fine form, and reached the her second WTA final at Rabat, Morocco in May, losing to Nuria Llagostera Vives after wins over Catalina Castano, Maureen Drake and Tathiana Garbin, followed by a walk-over against Na Li who had to retire at 3-3 from an ankle sprain. A three-set loss to Francesca Schiavone in the first round of the French Open prevented Zheng from defending her ranking points accrued there the previous year. But she recovered to record several more impressive results in August, reaching the second round at Los Angeles by again beating Shinobu Asagoe, the Canadian Open quarter-final (with wins over Maria-Emilia Salerni and Ai Sugiyama), and another quarter-final at New Haven (after defeating Katarina Srebotnik and Emilie Loit in qualifying, and Jamea Jackson in the main draw, though she was assisted by entering the tournament with a first-round bye and as a lucky loser in the final-round of qualifying to Jelena Kostanic). At the end of the month, she advanced to the second round at the U.S. Open by defeating Iveta Benesova. Further impressive first-round wins in September over Maria Vento-Kabchi (at Bali) and Jelena Jankovic (at Beijing) could not be consolidated on in subsequent rounds of the respective tournaments; but at Guangzhou, the last tournament she would play all year, she reached the semi-final with wins over Carly Gullickson, Jamea Jackson and Maria Kirilenko, before suffering her second loss of the year to Nuria Llagostera Vives. This string of results lifted her to a career-high world ranking of 42 in early October 2005.

2006 started poorly for Zheng in singles, with a string of five successive first-round losses dipping her world ranking to 56 by the end of February. However, after a first round loss in Indian Wells, her 2006 singles breakthough came at Miami where she reached the quarter-finals with wins over Natalie Dechy and Anna-Lena Groenefeld before falling to Tatiana Golovin in three sets, 6-3 3-6 2-6. She has since won two further WTA singles titles; at Estoril defeating number one seed Flavia Pennetta en route and in August at Stockholn defeating the top seed and former world number two Anastasia Myskina in the final 6-4 6-1.

Australian Open 2006

But meanwhile, in January, Zheng and her partner Yan Zi won the Women's Doubles Title at the Australian Open and became the first Chinese tennis players - male or female - to reach a final of a Grand Slam tournament, as well as win it. The route to the final was:

• First round: def. Linetskaya/Voskoboeva 6-1 6-0
• Second round: def. Dominguez Lino/Sanchez Lorenzo 6-4 6-0
• Third round: def. (7) Dementieva/Pennetta 6-1 6-2
• Quarterfinals: def. (4) Ruano Pascual/Suarez 4-6 7-5 6-1 (Saved three match points)</br>
• Semifinals: def. (9) Asagoe/Srebotnik 6-2 7-6 (2)
• In the final, they defeated Lisa Raymond (USA) / Samantha Stosur (AUS) 2-6 7-6(7) 6-3, saving two Championship Points in the second set tiebreak, and needing only a single Championship Point of their own to claim the Title.

Wimbledon 2006

At Wimbledon, Zheng and Max Mirnyi, seeded two reached the Semi Finals of the Mixed Doubles, where they were beaten by Bob Bryan and Venus Williams (who were unseeded), 7-5, 7-5. She triumphed in women's doubles with Yan Zi over Virginia Ruano Pascual and Paola Suarez 6-3 3-6 6-2, capturing China's first Wimbledon title. With her win, she became the first Chinese tennis player to amass over 1 million dollars in career earnings.

WTA / ITF titles

• Singles (7)
  • WTA (3)
    • 2006 : Estoril, Stockholm
    • 2005 : Hobart
  • ITF (4)
    • 2004 : ITF/Beijing 3
    • 2003 : ITF/Bronx
    • 2002 : ITF/Shanghai, ITF/Tianjin 1

• Doubles (9)
  • WTA (8)
    • 2006 : Australian Open, Berlin Open (Tier I), Rabat, s'Hertogenbosch, Wimbledon, New Hevan
    • 2005 : Hobart, Hyderabad
  • ITF (1)
    • 2005 : ITF/Beijing

External links

• WTA Tour profile for Jie Zheng

Categories

Find

Find