Dealing with pressure
Print Edition
Tennis trailblazer Li Na has won millions of young fans who follow her every move, but the 31-year-old admitted it was sometimes tough dealing with the pressure of being a role model.
As Asia’s first major tennis star, Li now has more than 10 million fans on Chinese social media and featured on the cover of Time magazine’s 2013 list of the world’s most influential people.
Over the years she has earned a reputation as a maverick and a prickly character in China.
“Now I feel a lot of pressure, you know, because so many children, they look up to you, what you do on the court, off the court,” she said yesterday.
Li is under intense scrutiny from Chinese media, to the extent she said this week it almost caused her to quit during a difficult run last year.
But the 2011 French Open champion said behaving in public is now a way of life.
“Sometimes we go to a party, we have a drink or something. The next day they put in newspaper, ‘She likes to drink,’ but they didn’t put the situation,” she said.
“So, yeah, after I read the newspaper, I said, ‘Okay, I can’t even drink when I’m at a party’. I said, ‘Okay, only water, healthy.’”
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