Sun Tiantian

The Chinese parents are called Wu Ju and Xu Feng. When Tiantian was eight years old they brought her to the tennis section.

Favorite tennis player in childhood was Steffi Graf .

Singles Tournaments

Tiantian first played international competitions in the fall of 1995, taking part in a small Chinese junior tournament. The debut in the adult round took place four years later: Sun immediately qualified on the dirt 25-thousander in Sarasota . In the years 2000-01, performances in the adult round become much more regular, which allows you to quickly rise in the ranking of the fourth hundred and start winning small tournaments.

In 2002-03, the Chinese woman gradually stabilizes the results more and more, which allows her to rise in the Top200 and at the Australian Open - 2003 for the first time play in the qualification of the Grand Slam tournament; that year, Sun twice takes part in such competitions and each time makes his way to the base. In the summer of that year, Tiantian reached its first more or less large finale of the professional tour competition: from qualification, she got to the title match of the 50-thousandth team in Modena , simultaneously defeating two Rambler's Top100 players and losing only to Melinda Zinc .

In 2004, the Chinese woman wins her first match in the main grids of the Grand Slam tournaments: at Wimbledon she manages to beat Tatyana Garbin . A year later, Sun first reached the quarter finals of the WTA competitions: first in Hyderabad , and then in Beijing (home success was the most status - one of the two matches was won by the current Top10 player: American Serena Williams ).

2006 brings the first title to the WTA tournaments : at a little prestigious tournament in Tashkent, the Chinese woman in five matches is second only to the set (to Maria Koryttseva in the first round). This victory, combined with the general stability of performances, allows her to finish the year for the only time in her career among the hundreds of the strongest tennis players in the world. In August of that year, Tiant won his second and final victory over the Top10 player: in August, at a tournament in Connecticut, she gave only four games to Swiss Patty Schnyder .

In 2007-09, Tiantian was gradually losing ground in singles, and the ability to play top-level doubles did not give her much chance to quickly get back.

Paired Tournaments

In parallel with a single career, the Chinese woman actively plays paired tournaments. Having changed several partners in the fall of 2002, she forms an alliance with Li Ting . Already at their first WTA tournament, they reach the semifinals, and from the next season they become one of the most serious rivals in doubles tournaments of any level: in the 2003 season, Chinese women win a dozen joint titles, including three times winning WTA competitions. Over the next few years, they gradually improve their results in larger tournaments: in 2004, they managed to win the Olympic tournament and get to the semifinals of major tournaments in Miami and Rome ; a year later, having beaten two seeded pairs, the Chinese women at Roland Garros for the first time reach the quarter-finals of the Grand Slam tournament.

In 2007, the duet with Li breaks up: Ting soon ends his career, and Tiant tries his hand in alliances with other partners. Together with Sun Shennan and Elena Likhovtseva, she reaches the quarter finals of the Grand Slam tournaments (in Australia and Wimbledon ), and paired with Peng Shuai, she reaches her only final in the first category competition (in Charleston ). The season ends with a series of three finals, the last two of which are won together with compatriot Yan Zi .

In 2008, Sun spends most of the season in an alliance with Peng Shuai : the girls win one title and achieve the semi-finals at the tournament in Rome . After a year, the paired results noticeably fall, which allows Tiantian to try to adjust the results in singles, but after a year of comparative failures in both groups of the tournament, the Chinese woman decides to end her active player career.

In the last years of her career, Sun began to show good results in mixed pairs competitions: in 2007, together with Austrian Julian Knowle, she reached the quarter-finals at the Australian Grand Slam and semi-finals in France, and a year later, already in an alliance with Serb Nenad Zimonich , became the first Chinese woman to win the competition of this series. In the quarter-finals of that tournament, the pair Kara Black / Paul Henley was replayed, and in the final, Sanya Mirza and Mahesh Bhupati .

National Team and National Tournaments

From 2001 to 2009, Tiantian regularly played for the national team in the Federation Cup , taking part in 19 match meetings during which 26 games were played (eight wins in singles and doubles). In 2005-08, with her participation, Chinese women went from playing in the regional zone to the tournament semifinal.

In 2006, Sun represented her country at the games of the XV Summer Asian Games . Tian earned two bronze medals in that competition: in the women's doubles tournament (along with Li Ting ) she lost to Taiwanese Chinese women Zhan Yunzhan and Zhuang Jiaong in the semifinals, and lost to Sanya Mirza and Leander in this stage of the mixed pairs competition (with Yu Xinyuan ) Paesu .

Twice Tiantian was selected for the Olympic tennis tournament . In 2008, their duet with Peng Shuai lost already at the start, but four years before, together with Li Ting , she surprised many observers by winning the first Olympic tennis medal in the history of her country. And already in the first round for this they had to beat one of the strongest tennis players in the history of women's doubles Olympic tournaments Venus Williams , for whom that defeat was the only one for four participation in such competitions. The American, however, then did not speak with her sister Serena , but with Chanda Rubin . In the semi-finals and finals, Li and Sun beat the national duets with the participation of two strongest pair tennis players of that period - Argentinean Paola Suarez and Spanish Virginia Ruano Pasqual .

Li Ting and Sun Tiantian Women's Doubles at the 2004 Athens Olympics

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