French Open Champion Li Na will visit Perth and the Hopman Cup for the first time this summer. Li Na will team up with World No. 423 Wu Di.
The Chinese player is currently ranked No. 6 on the WTA Tour rankings. She reached the final of the Australian Open in January where she lost to Kim Clijsters in three sets. It wasn’t until the Madrid tournament in April Li Na started to play well again after having some bad losses. Leading up to the French Open she reached the semi-finals in Madrid (l. Kvitova) and Rome (l. Stosur).
During her two weeks at Roland Garros she defeated Cirstea Sorana, Petra Kvitova, Victoria Azarenka, Maria Sharapova and in the final she took out Francesca Schiavone.
Li Na’s 20-year-old partner Di Wu has been playing mainly on the Futures and Challengers Tour. He did receive a wildcard into the China Open in Beijing last week where he lost in the first round to the much more experienced Marin Cilic of Croatia 2-6 0-6.
The official draw has been done for the Hyundai Hopman Cup 2012. The seedings have been done and the countries have been split into two groups:
GROUP A (Seeding in brackets)
(1) Czech Republic
Petra Kvitova & Tomas Berdych
(4) USA
Bethanie Mattek-Sands & Mardy Fish
Denmark
Caroline Wozniacki & Frederik Nielsen
Bulgaria
Tsvetana Pironkova & Grigor Dimitrov
GROUP B
(2) France
Marion Bartoli & Richard Gasquet
(3) Spain
Anabel Medina Garrigues & Fernando Verdasco
Australia
Jarmila Gajdosova & Lleyton Hewitt
China
Li Na & Wu Di
The Hyundai Hopman Cup will be played from 31 December 2011 – 7 January 2012 at the Burswood Dome in Perth.