Where is Peng Shuai and When Will we Know?

Welcome to Tennis Elbow, the column that looks back on the week that was in the world of tennis. This week, Charles Blouin-Gascon reviews the latest in the ongoing saga.

Where is Peng Shuai?

Remember her? The 35-year-old is a Chinese professional tennis player, with a little over 800 career singles matches played to her name. She also has a US Open semifinal berth from 2014, two singles titles, as well as a career-high of No. 14. Not too shabby.

Her resume in doubles shines even brighter actually. Peng won the 2013 Wimbledon, 2013 WTA Finals and 2014 French Open doubles titles, made the US Open semifinal, the Australian Open final, and has also won 20 other doubles tournaments. Most impressively, her career-high ranking in doubles is No. 1.

That’s right, for a while in 2014, the Chinese was the best doubles player in women’s tennis. And today in 2021, her whereabouts are rather unknown.

What happened to Peng Shuai?

On November 2, Peng shared a lengthy message on her verified Weibo account, where she accused a high-ranking member of the Chinese Communist Party of sexual assault. The message was deleted within a few minutes and all discussion of the case inside the country has been subject to blanket censorship. From there, Chinese officials followed the party line and, in public statements, either said they had no knowledge of the case to begin with or that it was not a matter of diplomacy.

You see, folks had no choice but to ask public officials about the matter, because Peng had gone silent on social media. She could technically have decided to remove the message herself and to then shy away from the public eye, but if you believe this then we have a house to sell you.

What’s that got to do with tennis?

What, are you saying that a former tennis player accusing a high-ranking official of sexual assault, then immediately going silent on social media, is not good enough for you?

Well on November 14, or a little under two weeks after Peng had shared…