Zheng Jie reaches Wimbledon semifinal

[noname]

Showing that her earlier win over the top seed Ivanova wasn't a fluke
First woman wild-card and Chinese player to reach the semis in singles at Wimbledon (she won the women's doubles in 2006)
To go further and win it all, she'll likely have to beat both of the Williams sisters

http://www.wimbledon.org/en_GB/news/match_reports/2008-07-01/200807011214930243609.html

[Adaon]

She's cute.

[BillBlythe]

Since i've been following Wimbledon for a while, I'll just make 2 points that annoyed me somewhat.

1. The commentators were butchering her name. It's 2 fricking syllables and they can't even say it right. There were 18 russian women in the tournament so you would think a chinese name would be a cake walk.

2. Not long after Zheng made the semi-finals, some guy on a tennis forum I usually go to was already making allusions between Zheng and a Chinese item on a menu. This bothered me a bit more because I've witnessed so often the way guys lump Asian women with exotic food. Like, not long ago I was watching a golf tournament with Tiger Woods in Thailand and one of the announcers said 'Today we're having Thai' and then they show 4 dancing Thai girls in skirts before going to commercials. That seems to be fairly prevalent.

Okay, one other thing. When a Thai woman was playing against Venus Williams today and Dick Enberg was talking about how hospitable Thais are by referring to the demeanor and face of the Thai woman it was creepy as hell. Probably just me but when an old white guys starts talking about how hospitable Thai people are I start making uneasy mental connections. You can practically hear the saliva hitting the base of the microphone.

[Sunflare]

Since i've been following Wimbledon for a while, I'll just make 2 points that annoyed me somewhat.

1. The commentators were butchering her name. It's 2 fricking syllables and they can't even say it right. There were 18 russian women in the tournament so you would think a chinese name would be a cake walk.

2. Not long after Zheng made the semi-finals, some guy on a tennis forum I usually go to was already making allusions between Zheng and a Chinese item on a menu. This bothered me a bit more because I've witnessed so often the way guys lump Asian women with exotic food. Like, not long ago I was watching a golf tournament with Tiger Woods in Thailand and one of the announcers said 'Today we're having Thai' and then they show 4 dancing Thai girls in skirts before going to commercials. That seems to be fairly prevalent.

Okay, one other thing. When a Thai woman was playing against Venus Williams today and Dick Enberg was talking about how hospitable Thais are by referring to the demeanor and face of the Thai woman it was creepy as hell. Probably just me but when an old white guys starts talking about how hospitable Thai people are I start making uneasy mental connections. You can practically hear the saliva hitting the base of the microphone.

Here we have Don Imus making an indirect remark concerning Afro-Americans during his newscast concerning suspended Dallas Cowboys cornerback Adam Jones, which practically sparked an nationwide outcry and the news of it making sports headlines everywhere on the net and in the newspapers.

But if we have sports commentators or others in the media making indirect and subtle yet racially motivated references concerning Asian women based on ignorance and fetishes then it's perfectly okay and as usual it goes unnoticed and considered insignificant small talk by the general public.

Things like this just continues goes to show the level of ignorance some of these people are on when it comes to their views on Asians.

[Russ]

FYI, her home city is Chengdu and she plans to donate part of her prize money from Wimbledon to the earthquake relief.

[tommyhtown]

OH Dang Tamarin lost. Bummer ... Good luck Zheng Jie!

[Nnsukka]

Venus looked awesome today and throughout the entire Wimbledon tournament. Baby sister, Serena, didn't look too bad and possibly against any other player on the tour, other than big sister V, she most likely would of won. Though Queen V. has shown once again why she is the best grass court player in the game today. She had came with her dominaring game, of power, agility, and experience.

She vollied nicely, served astronomically, and rallied like a machine... bulleting strong, flat and deep ground strokes into the corners of the court with mechanical precision, putting baby sister on the constant defensive in a thrilling showing of a plethora of baseline rallies. Serena tried to fight back with a bit of amazing skill of her own, cutting bis sis' power balls off at the net with crafty net game, though the immense experience of big Queen V on this surface allowed her to adjust and simply counter that crafty younger sisters tactics with an astonishing show of net game of her own, followed up by stunningly flawless forehand gunners to the corners and down the lines.

After having been creamed by younger sis in the last several grand slams they've faced off it, it was obvious that big V has gotten over the mental stresses of playing her little sister and came out to take care of business in defending her title in her most favored tournament. Congratulations Venus, I'm happy you've won, and after the match she showed amazing respect for her sister and was extremely classy in her commentary. I can't wait to see her play again in the US Open and Olympics. I love it when they cream those over rated lame ass Russian blondies. :biggrin:

If she stays as fit and on her game as she was during this tournament then I'll give it a 85% chance that she'll go on to win the US Open as well. When she's on her game.. she's unstoppable, with that power, speed and unbelievable court coverage. I'll be sure to watch the double final as well so that Lil sister will get a bit of victory rep as well today. Venus has said that she will be sure to play extra hard today in the doubles game, so to insure that Serena achieves some victory today as well. She is such a compassionate big sister.

[noname]

Serena ends Zheng's run, but she made it a good match, at least in the 2nd set

Venus goes on to win the title - I believe she broke a streak of losing to Serena in Grand Slam finals.
Interesting scheduling that they both had to go back just a few hours later, to play the ladies doubles final.