Jie Zheng of China is making waves at Wimbledon and is now beginning to rival her nation’s former leader Mao Tse-Tung as the most famous tennis player from her country.
Zheng is the first Chinese player to reach a singles semifinal at a major championship, thanks for a wild-card entry in the tournament and string of unlikely wins, highlighted by her third-round upset of world No. 1 Ana Ivanovic.
As documented by Bud Collins in his newly released book THE BUD COLLINS HISTORY OF TENNIS, Chairman Mao was the first Chinese of note to play the game. Wrote Collins, “Chairman Mao’s biographer, Edgar Snow, reported that the chairman enjoyed playing tennis with comrades in Shensi Province after his army had survived the famed, brutal Long March of 6,000 miles in 1935. Unfortunately his tennis career ended when a goat ate the net. That must have gotten his goat. But he would have been proud of Zi Yan and Jie Zheng, first Chinese ladies to win majors, Australian and Wimbledon doubles, 2006. Mao was born December 26, 1893 in Shaoshan Xiang Tan, Hunan Province, China and died at the age of 82, September 9, 1976 in Beijing.”
Zheng is the best performing women’s wild card at Wimbledon in the history of the tournament. (Previous best were fourth round performances by Zina Garrison in 1982, Anne Smith in 1985, Sam Smith in 1998 and Maria Sharapova in 2003.) Goran Ivanisevic won the men’s title as a wild card in 2001.
