Friday 2 March 2012

Anastasia Myskina

Anastasia Myskina Biography
Anastasia Myskina (ah-nass-TAH-seeya MUYSS-kee-nah) was born July 8th, 1981 in Moscow, Russia from parents Andrey and Galina. She started playing tennis at 6 with her parents , she then went to the Spartak club in Moscow where she was coached by Marat Safin's mother until they left for Spain in 1994. Anastasia is trained by Svitoslav Mirza since 1994 and has improved every year since even reaching a career rank of #41 in July 2000! She is an established top-10 player and picked up the seventh tournament win of her career when successfully retaining her Doha title. Like most of her fellow Russians, Myskina has a tidy game from the back of the court, and also boasts a neat touch at the net. However, her record against the likes of the Williams sisters, Justine Henin-Hardenne, Lindsay Davenport and Jennifer Capriati is poor. It is also time for Myskina to make an impact at Grand Slam level but her record in Paris is woeful, having never made the third round in four attempts. Anastasia turned professional in 1998, the year in which she broke into the WTA top 500. The very next year, she entered the top 100 and went on to end 2002 in the top 20 and 2003 in the top 10. On March 8, 2004, she was ranked no. 5 in the world. She has won 8 WTA tour singles titles in her career as of 2004, with the most recent being Roland Garros. She routed fellow Russian Elena Dementieva 6-2, 6-1 in the final to become the first Russian
woman to win a Grand Slam singles event.

Anastasia Myskina

Interview with Anastasia Myskina

Anastasia Myskina - Elvis Presley - I need your

love tonight

Elena Dementieva

Elena Dementieva Biography
The Russian pro tennis player, Elena Vyacheslavovna Dementieva, was born in Moscow in 1981. Elena's rise to a professional athlete started at the tender age of thirteen when she entered and won her first international tournament in France. Four years later she became a professional tennis player in 1998, and took a spot in the top 100 players in 1999. It was during 1999 when she represented her home country of Russia against Venus Williams in the Fed Cup.
However, Elena would face Venus again at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Australia. She ultimately lost the gold medal to Venus, but brought home the silver medal. Also in that year, Elena was named the Women's Tennis Association's Most Improved Player after ranking in their top twenty. The next year she once again made the top twenty ranking, beating Anna Kournikova out of her four-year position as the top ranked Russian tennis player. Shortly after achieving this ranking Elena injured her shoulder while in Australia, forcing her to change her serve in order to be able to continue playing.
Eventually her shoulder healed, and in 2003 she was able to play in the more tournaments than any of the other top ten ranked players, totaling twenty-seven for the year. That year she also won her first title with the Women's Tennis Association when playing at Amelia Island. That year while playing doubles in the Wimbledon Tournament she and her partner, Lina Krasnoroutskaya, beat Venus and Serena Williams and making it to the semifinals of the tournament. In 2004 Elena managed to rank at her highest in the singles category and was placed as the sixth best player in the world. Two other Russians also ranked in the top ten that year, making it the first time that three Russians have ever simultaneously appeared in the top ten rankings.
Elena has continued to play in tournaments with the Women's Tennis Association and has achieved high rankings along the way. Her skills and her serve almost always guarantee that she will make it into the quarterfinals or semifinals of whatever tournament she plays in.

Elena Dementieva