MELBOURNE, Australia — Seven months after giving retirement serious thought, Li Na made it lucky her third time in an Australian Open final with a 7-6 (3), 6-0 win over Dominika Cibulkova to become the oldest women’s champion here in
MELBOURNE, Australia — Seven months after giving retirement serious thought, Li Na made it lucky her third time in an Australian Open final with a 7-6 (3), 6-0 win over Dominika Cibulkova to become the oldest women’s champion here in the Open era.
Li, who turns 32 next month, lost finals to Kim Clijsters in 2011 and to Victoria Azarenka last year. In between, she won the 2011 French Open in one of the many firsts she’s established for Chinese tennis.
Widely popular at Melbourne Park for her funny post-match interviews and wisecracks about her husband and his snoring, Li didn’t disappoint the Rod Laver Crowd in her first victory speech.
She first thanked her agent, Max, “for making me rich,” her coach Carlos Rodriguez and then her husband, former coach and constant traveling companion, Shan Jiang.
She told him he was “even famous in China.”
“So thanks for him give up everything just traveling with me to be my hitting partner, fix the drinks, fix the racket. So thanks a lot, you are a nice guy,” she said, pausing for the laughter. “Also you are so lucky, find me.”
In both her previous finals at Melbourne Park, Li won the first set but went down in three. Against Azarenka last year, she stumbled and twisted her ankle, and needed a medical timeout in the third set after hitting her head on the court.
She had no such trouble against No. 20-seeded Cibulkova late Friday night, racing through the second set in 27 minutes after taking the first in a tiebreaker.
Li’s supporters were everywhere in the crowd, some with Chinese flags painted on their faces, others holding Chinese flags or giant signs painted with Chinese characters.
Li opened the final by breaking Cibulkova, holding, then getting a breakpoint chance in the third game. But Cibulkova held, and then broke back in the sixth game thanks to Li’s consecutive double-faults. Li broke in the 11th game and had a set point serving for the set in the 12th, but lost three straight points to ensure it went to the tiebreaker.
As Li began her roll in the second set, someone yelled — before Cibulkova served — “C’mon Li Na, bagel her!”
She did.
A half-hour later she was holding up both thumbs to the crowd, and holding back tears as she hugged her Slovakian rival at the net. She went immediately to the side of the court to shake hands with her coach Rodriguez.
The diminutive Cibulkova, one of the shortest players ever to reach a Grand Slam final at 5-foot-3, had four wins over Top 20 players on her way to the final, including a fourth-round upset of third-seeded Maria Sharapova and a straight-sets semifinal trouncing of No. 5 Agnieszka Radwanska.
She had to pull the microphone down closer to her before her post-match speech.
“These were just fantastic two weeks of my life,” she said, pausing to laugh, and then cry. “Hello to everybody in Slovakia. This means a lot for our country and I’m happy I can be the one here for Slovakia.”
No. 4-ranked Li, who reportedly has four-times more followers on her Chinese social networking site than there are people in Slovakia, had a good run through the tournament as other star players such as Serena Williams, Sharapova and Azarenka tumbled out by the quarterfinals.
Men’s doubles
MELBOURNE, Australia — Lukasz Kubot and Robert Lindstedt captured the title in their first Grand Slam as a team with a 6-3, 6-3 win over Eric Butorac and Raven Klaasen.
Kubot and Lindstedt dominated from the start, fending off the only breakpoint they faced and wrapping up the final in just an hour and five minutes.
Butorac and Klaasen — who had an upset win over top-ranked Bob and Mike Bryan in the third round — upped their tempo in the second set to stay in touch, but could only watch as their opponents served out the match.
