Sun Tiantian

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This is a Chinese name; the family name is Sun.

**Sun Tiantian**

Country	China
Residence	Beijing, China
Date of birth	October 12, 1981
Place of birth	He Nan, China
Height	5' 9in (65 kg)
Weight	143 1/2 lbs. (1.75 m)
Turned Pro	1999
Plays	Right (two-handed backhand)
Career Prize Money	$5549,596
Singles
Career record:	177-108
Career titles:	1 WTA, 6 ITF Titles
Highest ranking:	No. 88 (October 3, 2005)
Grand Slam results
Australian Open	1st Round (2006)
French Open	2nd Round (2006)
Wimbledon	2nd Round ('04, '06)
U.S. Open	2nd Round (2005)
Doubles
Career record:	191-90
Career titles:	8 (13 ITF titles)
Highest ranking:	No. 18 (October 4, 2004)
Infobox last updated on: July 1, 2006.

Women's Tennis
Olympic medal record
Gold	2004 Athens	Doubles

Sun Tiantian (Simplified Chinese: 孙甜甜, pinyin: Sūn Tiántián) (born October 12, 1981 in Henan province) is a female tennis player from the People's Republic of China.

In September 2000, she won two successive $10,000 ITF singles titles, a feat she would repeat in June 2001, when she won another two back-to-back.

In 2002, she found repeat success at the next level up, winning two $25,000 tournaments: firstly in April, at Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam (beating countrywoman Zheng Jie in the semi-final and Korean Mi Ra Jeon in the final); and then in August at Beijing (beating Zheng Jie in the semi-final again, and Rika Fujiwara of Japan in the final).

In 2003, she reached the final of a $50,000 tournament at Modena despite entering as a lucky loser to countrywoman Yan Zi in the final round of qualifying. Having defeated several high-quality opponents in the forms of Martina Sucha, Maret Ani and Gala Leon Garcia, she lost in the final against Melinda Czink.

This year, she also gained entry into several WTA tournaments, most notably coming through qualifying at Doha by defeating Yuliana Fedak, Lubomira Kurhajcova and Maria Sanchez Lorenzo, only to lose in the deciding set of her opening round match against Nicole Pratt; and at the U.S. Open after a narrow victory over Selima Sfar, only to lose to Saori Obata at the first hurdle in the main draw. But she finished the year world-ranked 141.

In 2004, she qualified for the Australian Open after a win over Roberta Vinci, then qualified for Doha for the second year running. She went on to record impressive wins over Eva Birnerova and Sandra Kleinova to qualify for Miami; and over Camille Pin and Mara Santangelo to qualify for Amelia Island, where she also beat Cara Black in the main draw first round. At Wimbledon, she qualified with a win over Barbara Schwartz and won her first-round tie against Tathiana Garbin before succumbing to Anne Kremer in Round Two. At the end of the year, she lost in a tight three-set final in the first $50,000 Shenzhen tournament to on-form countrywoman Li Na, 3-6 6-4 2-6. Her year-end ranking had improved to 118.

Sun also competed in the 2004 Summer Olympics, defeating Conchita Martinez and Virginia Ruano Pascual of Spain in the women's tennis doubles final to win a gold medal along with her partner Li Ting.

In 2005, she reached her first WTA singles quarter-final at Hyderabad, defeating Tamarine Tanasugarn 6-2 6-1 in the second round before losing a close match against prominent German player Anna-Lena Groenefeld 6-7 3-6. After a relatively barren Spring season marked by several near-misses in qualifying, she again made her mark in August: both at Los Angeles, where she took French star Marion Bartoli to three sets in the second round, and in the U.S. Open, where she qualified with convincing straight-sets wins over Marlene Weingartner and Ludmila Cervanova and went on to defeat Sam Stosur 6-3 7-6 in the first round of the main draw before succumbing to Anabel Medina Garrigues of Spain. But her career-best win to date was yet to come the following month at Beijing, where she defeated former #1 player Serena Williams in the 2nd Round after an easy first-round victory over Tatiana Panova of Russia, only to be outperformed in her second WTA quarter-final by rising star Maria Kirilenko. This run of results propelled her to a career-best world ranking of 88; but by the close of the year she had slipped back slightly to #105.

Early in 2006, Sun suffered some extremely tough draws, but fought every inch of the way in tight three-set losses to Amélie Mauresmo in the first round of the Australian Open and Nuria Llagostera Vives in the first round at Gold Coast, only to lose in qualifying for Doha and Dubai.

At the Tashkent Open held in Uzbekistan, Sun fought her way past Iroda Tulyaganova in the final to win the first WTA title of her career and became only the fourth Chinese woman to win a WTA title. On 9 October 2006, she moved to a new career high of No.81 and is currently the Chinese No.4.

She is one of only two active players to have an advantage over Serena Williams in terms of win-loss match record (1-0: def. Williams in the Round of 16 at Beijing). The other is Sybille Bammer of Austria.