Tennis: Crowd favourite Li Na gets closer to her shopping spree

China's Li Na dispatched another seeded player from the Australian Open yesterday to secure her second straight semifinal berth, and her opponent said she was the woman to beat.

Li is carrying a heavy burden of expectation that a Grand Slam win will inspire a rush of new players from China, where sporting success is considered a matter of national pride but where table tennis and badminton remain far more widespread than her sport.

She is already China's leading player, cracking the top 10 rankings last year with three singles titles and reaching her first Grand Slam semifinal at Melbourne Park by beating current No 1 Caroline Wozniacki and Venus Williams before losing to Serena Williams.

She beat Kim Clijsters - one of the top favourites at Melbourne Park - this month at a warm-up tournament in Sydney, fighting back from 0-5 in the first set to win in straight sets.

She beat No 8 Victoria Azarenka to reach the fourth round, and Andrea Petkovic in yesterday's quarterfinal 6-2, 6-4, prompting the the 30th-seeded Petkovic to say her Chinese opponent was her tip to win the tournament.

Not so fast, said Li, who will play either Wozniacki in the semis, with Clijsters or No 2 Vera Zvonareva on the other side of the draw.

"I wish I can win the tournament," Li said, when told of Petkovic's prediction. "But if I need to win tournament, I still have two steps I need to do. [It's] always easy to say something."

Li, 28, has become a crowd favourite in Melbourne with a demeanour that is all business on court, but that quickly turns to snappy one-liners in broken English that reveal a quick wit and sharp sense of humour.

Li's lighthearted remark that her coach and husband Jiang Shan's biggest influence was to promise to let her loose with their credit card if she won, has become a running joke of the tournament. She was asked courtside yesterday if her quarter-final victory was enough to win a shopping spree, or whether she needed to go all the way to the championship.

"No, end of the tournament," she said with a smile, pointing toward her support box, where Jiang and her team had been a minute earlier but the seats were now empty. "You can see now - the credit card, he just left, you can't find him any more."

Li, who lost last year's semifinal in two tiebreak sets to eventual champion Serena Williams, came to Melbourne after winning the title at a tuneup event in Sydney and is on a 10-match winning streak.

"Is good for me. I mean, the second time in the Grand Slam semifinal, always in the Australia Open, and also before I played well in Sydney," she said.

"Hopefully, I can do better in this year, and everyone will see me again."

Petkovic, who beat former No 1 Maria Sharapova and had a victory against Venus Williams when Williams retired with an injury to reach the quarters, said Li was unflappable and gave her no chances in yesterday's match, serving no double faults, keeping her lively footwork and blasting deep, flat attacking shots.

"She has this sneaky aggressive play, I would call it," Petkovic said, admiringly.

"I think she played really well. I think she's going to win the tournament."

Li gave up tennis for two years to do media studies at university after becoming disillusioned with her lack of rankings success and re-entered the game in 2004.

"After two years, I was feeling like, OK, I'm grown up, I should stand up to try my best," she said.

Now she's playing better and is far happier on the court than she used to be.

And with every game, the prospect of a new Chinese hero grows closer.

"Wow, amazing for me, amazing for my team," Li said yesterday, asked what it would mean to win the tournament.

"Maybe amazing for China tennis also."

* Men's No 3 seed Novak Djokovic, of Serbia, was to play Tomas Berdych, of the Czech Republic, in last night's late game.

- AP