But when she was eight, her coach noticed she was using the racquet more like a tennis player, and a big decision was made.

When she got home she announced a switch, which prompted her shocked mother to ask: "What's tennis?"

Twenty years on, the conversion has been vindicated. Tonight, the feisty 28-year-old, who has a red rose over a love heart tattooed on her chest, will stride on to Rod Laver Arena to compete in the women's final against Kim Clijsters of Belgium, in a bid to be crowned the Australian Open champion.

Li is the first Chinese national to make a grand slam singles final.

But, as she said with typical self-deprecation, even if she wins tonight, most Chinese people would forget about it in a month.

About 14 million people play tennis in China, just 1 per cent of the population.

But Li may be overly modest. Already the Chinese media has hailed her a sporting heroine and compared her to their biggest stars, NBA basketballer Yao Ming and Olympic gold medal hurdler Liu Xiang. And the Asian Tennis Federation has seized on Li's success as a boost for Asia's bid to host a grand slam tournament, raising the possibility of a fifth major or that the Australian Open, already billed as the grand slam of the Asia-Pacific, could be reassigned to Asia.

Li's relationship with the Chinese tennis establishment has been occasionally strained. In 2002 she was so disillusioned by the Chinese tennis system she dropped out for two years to study journalism at university.

Li also led the successful push that allowed Chinese players to retain most of their prizemoney rather than hand it back to the state-run tennis federation.

Now the world No 7, she has become the best performed of what the Chinese call the "Golden Flowers", a generation of women tennis players including Zheng Jie and Yan Zi, who have won two grand slam doubles titles, and Peng Shuai, who reached the third round in Melbourne this year.

However, it is only this year, as Li has been interviewed after winning match after match, that the wider world has learned just how winning a personality she has.

She possesses quirky individualism and a spiky humour.

When asked what drove her to victory in the semi-final over world No 1 Caroline Wozniacki, saving a match point en route, Li answered: "Prizemoney."

If she scores her 12th successive victory tonight, her winnings will grow by $2.2 million - which is two-thirds of her total career earnings to date.

Many sportspeople talk of how they live for their sport. But Li says that once she's off the court she wants to forget about tennis.

Jiang Shan, the man who talked her into returning to the sport in 2004, is now her husband and coach. However, after revealing that her husband kept her awake before a game with his snoring, she said: "I think today he can stay in the bathroom."

Another example of the unexpected from this delightfully unorthodox sportswoman is when she is asked about her male Chinese counterparts.

"I think they're strong in the body, but not so strong in the mind," Li says.

"Right now, they think about, oh, ranking around 300, that's perfect. I mean, 300 is nothing."

Her popularity in China is captured by leading online news site netease.com: "It's not an exaggeration to say that she has become a new name card of China's sports in the world. Li Na's success doesn't only mean that she has become a leading figure among tennis players in Asia, but also made her the first internationally influential female athlete (from China)."

Li's progress will also have tennis and television executives salivating. Cracking the world's biggest market has been tough and thankless work for the big-ticket sporting franchises.

State-controlled television has been reluctant to pay up for many major sports - a sore case in point is Britain's Premier League soccer - and there is only one dedicated sports channel.

Her opponent tonight, world No 3 and reigning US Open champion Clijsters, has been something of a grand slam nemesis, beating Li in the Wimbledon quarter-finals in 2006 and at the same stage of the 2009 US Open.

Clijsters won four of their first five encounters but Li finally turned the tables earlier this month in the Sydney International final when she overhauled a 5-0 deficit in the first set to win 7-6 (7-3) 6-3.

As she makes her way on to the grandest stage of her career, is the world No 7's mother now a fan of tennis? "No," Li says, "she just says: 'I have my life. I don't want to come with you'."