The medical bag has yet to join the racquet bag as standard gear for the game. But one of the great appeals of tennis is the weekly opportunity for remedy it supplies players. Just when cynics are compelled to put a career on life support, a run deep into a Grand Slam tournament draw can serve as a tennis defibrillator to jolt that player back to life.
We've surpassed the halfway point of the 2011 season, which seems like a good time to take stock of some of the women's wonders we've witnessed so far. Here are our picks for the top five surprises:
Li Na: It's hardly a shock that Li, the first Chinese player to crack the Top 10 and first to reach a major final at the Australian Open, would finally master a major. That the woman with the rose tattoo would bloom at Roland Garros is remarkable considering she had never won a clay-court title before. She endured a nearly three-month winless drought during the spring that prompted her to relieve her husband of his coaching duties, and she had never surpassed the French Open fourth round before. None of that mattered much to the charismatic competitor boldly willing to trade baseline blasts with any woman in the world. Li defeated four Top 10 opponents, including defending champion Francesca Schiavone, to continue her career of firsts in becoming the first Chinese Grand Slam singles champ. The former badminton player, whose mother did not even know what tennis was when her daughter took up the sport, might well have changed the sporting culture in her homeland.
Petra Kvitova: Those who watched the then-world No. 62 sporting a smile that sparkled with braces surge to the Wimbledon semifinals last summer or saw the more polished player she's become storm out to a 16-1 start this season, collecting championships in two of her first three tournaments, were aware of Kvitova's titanic talent. Yet the poise and power she displayed in dispatching 2004 champion Maria Sharapova in the Wimbledon final to become the first lefty to raise the Rosewater Dish since her compatriot and tennis heroine Martina Navratilova in 1990 was commendable, considering Kvitova's first career grass-court win came just a year ago at SW19. One of the most complete players in the game owns the all-court acumen to be a Top 10 presence for years.
Sabine Lisicki: An ankle injury limited Lisicki to 10 tournaments in 2010, as she was carted off the court on a wheelchair in pain at the 2010 U.S. Open. Relegated to the Challenger circuit to revive her ranking, which plummeted to No. 218 in March, Lisicki likely would have lined up behind Andrea Petkovic, Julia Goerges and the retired Anke Huber in German tennis name recognition at that point. But the 21-year-old with the booming serve and ever-present gold horseshoe around her neck completely resurrected her career when she qualified for Roland Garros and nearly knocked off No. 3 Vera Zvonareva before another agonizing injury saw her carried off the red clay on a stretcher. Shrugging off that setback as if it were an itchy shawl, Lisicki won her first title in three years at Birmingham to earn a Wimbledon wild card, sparking a run that saw her win 11 of 12 grass-court matches, including conquests of French Open champ Li and former Wimbledon finalist Marion Bartoli, before bowing to Sharapova in the semifinals. Currently ranked a career-high No. 21, Lisicki should rise even higher if she can solidify her second serve.
Francesca Schiavone: How can a 2010 Grand Slam champion and Top 10 player snare a spot on the list of 2011 surprises? Consider that in the weeks leading up to her Roland Garros defense, the undersized Italian whose passion pours from her pores like perspiration had compiled an underwhelming 7-4 record on red clay. Given the fact that during the past decade only one woman (Justine Henin) successfully defended a French Open title, and the last woman older than 30 to reign at Roland Garros was Chris Evert (who was 31 when she won the last of her seven titles in Paris in 1986), some speculated Schiavone's quest to return to the French Open final would be as easy as trying to sweep up Court Central armed with only a toothbrush. Facing Schiavone's assortment of ever-changing spins and speeds can be as disorientating as trying to apply makeup while staring at a fun-house mirror, and she used her vast variety to befuddle four Top 25 players and return to the final before bowing to eventual champ Li. A trio of veterans each 28 or older—Schiavone, Roberta Vinci and Flavia Pennetta—give Italy almost as many Top 25 players as perennial power Russia, which features four.
Tsvetana Pironkova: Peering out at the grass from beneath a vanilla visor, the then-82nd-ranked Pironkova crafted one of the most monumental upsets in Wimbledon history last year when she swept five-time champion Venus Williams in the quarterfinals. What did she do for an encore? Not much. Pironkova returned to SW19 with an abysmal 9-23 record since that upset, staggering to 13 first-round defeats. So that streak of sustained futility plus the pressure of defending her Wimbledon ranking points should have all added up to disaster, right? Wrong. The Bulgarian made a bid for honorary Maleeva sister status as she swept Venus again by the identical 6-2, 6-3 score and pushed eventual champ Kvitova to three sets in the quarters. She's surpassed the second round only twice in 23 career major appearances, but the good news for Pironkova is that with the 2012 Olympic tennis event scheduled for Wimbledon, she might well have two shots at her favorite tournament spot next year.
This article was originally published on ESPN.com.