Li Na guns down Sharapova on way to final
A little bit of history has been made at The French Open Tennis Championship with Li Na becoming the first Chinese player to ever reach the final of the tournament. No doubt she will be hoping to push history a little bit further by triumphing in the final but at the moment; she is due all the credit for coming out on top of Russian tennis star Maria Sharapova.
Li Na triumphed 6-4 7-5 and is now playing in her second consecutive Grand Slam final. This comes after she reached the final of the Australian Open Championship in January 2011. There Li Na lot out to Kim Clijsters but will no doubt be hoping for a bit more luck in this tournament.
The Russian made too many errors
When it came to the semi-final, Li Na definitely had some luck on her side with her opponent Sharapova making a large number of errors. In total, the Russian committed 10 double faults in addition to her 28 unforced errors, a number of mistakes that any tennis player would struggle to recover from. This means that Sharapova is still looking to complete a clean sweep of all the major tennis tournaments with the French Open still evading her. No doubt Sharapova will be back next year hoping for more but for now, the spotlight deserves to fall on the Chinese star.
Who will Li Na face?
Her opponent in the final will either be Franscesca Schiavone, the current French Open champion or French starlet Marion Bartoli. No matter who gets through to the final, a tough task lies in store for Li Na and perhaps the easier task may come in facing the reigning champion because if Bartoli makes it through, the local crowd will be rooting for her all the way.
However, the analysis of the final can wait until the match-up is concluded and for now, Li Na deserves to give herself a pat on the back for a convincing semi-final win but you get the feeling that preparation for the final has already begun.
With the final taking place on Saturday there is not a lot of time to recover or put together a breakdown of the opponents style of play but equally, this means there is not a lot of time to get nervous. With one Grand Slam final behind her already this season, Li Na should know what it is all about and hopefully she can give her all in her attempt to make history in France.