Women's tennis players

In the first year of self-managed players, China's quartet of Li Na, Zheng Jie, Peng Shuai and Yan Zi quieted doubts about whether they could survive on the highly-competitively WTA tour after leaving the state-support system.

Li reached No 15 in the world in October to equal Zheng's all-time best for a Chinese player, which was set five months before. Zheng dropped to 35 but her season was highlighted by a victory over then world No 1 Dinara Safina at August's Los Angeles Championship. As for Peng, she managed to stay in world top 50. Yan is the only player who performed worse than last year. She dropped to 306 in the rankings. However, she did land a sponsorship deal with Mercedes-Benz.