Anna Kournikova was born June 7th 1981 in Moscow. Her parents names are Allah and Sergei. She received her first tennis raquet at 5 years old when her parents sold their tv to buy her for christmas. She played in a club near her place untill age 11. After, she moved to Bradenton, Florida (USA) to train with Nick Bollitierri. At 14, she represented Russia in a Fed cup match and became the youngest player ever to win a fed cup match.
She won her first professionnel title in 1999 at Midland, Michigan, an ITF tournament. She was 5th favoutie in Illinois the same year and won her 2nd career ITF tournament.
Kournikova made her WTA debut at 15 years old at the US Open where she finally lost against #1 player Steffi Graf. She also made it to the double quarter finals that same tournament.
More recently, she won the rookie of the year award in 1996. In 1997, she improved very much to even make it to the semis in Wimbledon. She lost to world number one Martina Hingis at the French Open and at Wimbledon. This year, she made her first career WTA final in Key Biscane against Venus Williams in a tough 3 set match. She also won her first doubles title with Monica Seles in Tokyo.
Kournikova is still very young and she seems to have a great future ahead. Her best WTA ranking is 10th reached a few months ago...
Kournikova won her first grand slam title this year (1999) with Martina Hingis in doubles at the Australian Open. Since then, they have played reguraly together and have rapidly became one of the best pairs actually...Anna finished #1 in doubles for the 1999 season, quite a good performance considering she didn't compete in Wimbledon or in the US Open...
Anna now resides in Miami with her mom and is ready to give all she has to enter the top 5. As I am speaking, Anna no longer has a coach and is trained by her mom. Also, in 1999, she made an important move going from IMG to Octogon for her agency. Some speculate that she might had been jealous of all the sponsorship deals Martina Hingis was getting from IMG and she wasn't getting. At Octogon, she is very well treated and her agent there is no one else than the big boss, Phil de Picciotto.
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