Anna Sergejewna Kurnikowa
Anna Kurnikowa | |||||||||||||
Kurnikowa during a visit to Bagram Air Base in 2009 | |||||||||||||
Nation: | Russia | ||||||||||||
Birthday: | June 7th 1981 | ||||||||||||
Size: | 173 cm | ||||||||||||
1st professional season: | 1995 | ||||||||||||
Resignation: | 2003 | ||||||||||||
Playing hand: | Right, two-handed backhand | ||||||||||||
Prize money: | $ 3,584,662 | ||||||||||||
singles | |||||||||||||
Career record: | 209: 129 | ||||||||||||
Highest ranking: | 8 (November 20, 2000) | ||||||||||||
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Double | |||||||||||||
Career record: | 200: 71 | ||||||||||||
Career title: | 16 | ||||||||||||
Highest ranking: | 1 (November 22, 1999) | ||||||||||||
Weeks as No. 1: | 10 | ||||||||||||
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Mixed | |||||||||||||
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Sources: official player profiles at the ATP / WTA and ITF (see web links ) |
Anna Sergejewna Kurnikova ( Russian Анна Сергеевна Курникова , scientific transliteration Anna Sergeevna Kurnikova , English and French transcription Anna Kournikova ; born June 7, 1981 in Moscow ) is a former Russian tennis player .
Career
Anna Kurnikowa started playing tennis in a weekly children's sports program at the age of five. Her first trainer was Larissa Preobrazhenskaya . In February 1992 she went to Nick Bollettieri's tennis academy in Bradenton , Florida . At the end of the 1990s, Pavel Složil and Eric van Harpen also took care of their training before mother Alla took over this task from 2000. From the tournament in Rome in May 2002 to the end of her career in June 2003, Harold Solomon was her coach.
Kurnikowa made her professional debut at the age of 14 in September 1995. In the same year she was Orange Bowl winner and number 1 in the juniors, at the end of the season she was 281 in the WTA world rankings. When she made her Fed Cup debut for Russia in 1996 , she was the youngest ever player in the competition. By the end of the season she improved in the ranking to position 57. For Russia, she competed in doubles at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta.
In 1997 Kurnikowa played for the first time at Wimbledon and immediately reached the semifinals, which brought her 32nd place in the WTA rankings. The following year, she won her first tournament victory at the side of Monica Seles in Tokyo . 1999 followed more double titles with Martina Hingis at the Australian Open , in Indian Wells , Rome , Eastbourne and at the Masters as well as the mixed final with Jonas Björkman at Wimbledon ; also the individual final in Hilton Head , in which she was defeated by Martina Hingis 2: 6 and 3: 6. At the end of 2000, after further double titles (in Gold Coast with Julie Halard-Decugis , in Hamburg with Natallja Swerawa and at the Masters with Martina Hingis) , Kurnikowa achieved her best place in the individual world rankings with 8th place.
In the following years she won four more double titles, one with Barbara Schett in Sydney (2001), two with Martina Hingis (2001 in Moscow and 2002 at the Australian Open, the last of eleven joint titles ) and one with Janet Lee in Shanghai .
At the age of 21, she largely withdrew from professional tennis due to severe back and spinal problems. At the end of the 2003 season, after only five tournament starts (the last in April in Charleston ) , she was only in 305th place in the ranking. In the summer of 2004 she played a few exhibitions, then again graced the cover of Maxim magazine , advertised Omega watches and produced a new calendar. In the world rankings it was no longer listed.
In 1998, 1999 and 2000 Kurnikowa was able to qualify in singles and doubles for the Masters, the later WTA Tour Championships . She won the doubles competition there in 1999 and 2000, and in 2000 she also reached the semi-finals in singles. In the Fed Cup , she had twelve wins (ten in doubles) and seven defeats (five in singles) in a total of twelve appearances in three years.
Kurnikowa, who was placed in the top 20 of the WTA world rankings for a long time and reached a semi-finals and a final several times, did not win a single title in her professional career.
Life after professional sport
Kurnikowa is well known even among people who are not interested in women's tennis. Their relationships were reported extensively in the rainbow press, and photos of her in scanty clothing appeared in various erotic magazines. Kurnikowa is also present in the media after her retirement and has several advertising contracts. In addition to her sporting achievements, she owes her great fame to her appearance; she has often been referred to as the more recent sex symbol . Your name was one of the most frequently entered search terms in Internet search engines for a while .
Personal
Kurnikova's father Sergei is a professor and used to be a wrestler, her mother Alla is an economist. The Kazakh tennis player Yevgeny Korolev is Anna Kurnikowa's cousin. Kurnikova was for some time with the ice hockey player Sergei Fyodorov . According to him, the two married in Moscow in 2001, but they are said to have divorced shortly afterwards. Since the end of 2001, Kurnikowa has been in a relationship with the Spanish singer Enrique Iglesias , whom she met while shooting his music video Escape. In 2017 she became the mother of twins. Their third child was born on January 30, 2020.
Tournament victories
Double
Performing in Grand Slam tournaments
singles
competition | 1996 | 1997 | 1998 | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | Career |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Australian Open | - | 1 | 3 | AF | AF | VF | 1 | 2 | VF |
French Open | - | 3 | AF | AF | 2 | - | 1 | - | AF |
Wimbledon | - | HF | - | AF | 2 | - | 1 | - | HF |
US Open | AF | 2 | AF | - | 3 | - | 1 | - | AF |
Double
competition | 1996 | 1997 | 1998 | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | Career |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Australian Open | - | 1 | 2 | S. | HF | VF | S. | AF | S. |
French Open | - | AF | HF | F. | AF | - | - | - | F. |
Wimbledon | - | 2 | - | - | HF | - | HF | - | HF |
US Open | VF | AF | 2 | - | 2 | - | VF | - | VF |
Trivia
The starting hand Ace / King in Texas Hold'em Poker is often referred to as "Anna Kurnikowa" because it starts with the same letters (A / K). This name goes hand in hand with the saying: "Looks good, but seldom wins." An allusion to Kurnikowa's successes during her tennis career, because she was never able to win an individual title on the WTA Tour, although she was among the top tennis players for years.
In 2014 the German rapper Haftbefehl released a track called “Anna Kournikova” on his album “Russian Roulette”. In this he uses the tennis player as personification for the automatic Kalashnikov assault rifle .
Web links
- Anna Kurnikova's website .
- WTA profile of Anna Sergejewna Kurnikowa (English)
- ITF Profile of Anna Kournikova (English)
- Fed Cup Statistics for Anna Kournikova (English)
- Literature by and about Anna Sergejewna Kurnikowa in the catalog of the German National Library
- Anna Kurnikowa in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Panagiotis Kolokythas: Top 100 search terms 2001 at Lycos. In: PC world . December 20, 2001, accessed February 13, 2016 .
- ↑ [1] , Bunte.de, accessed on April 3, 2014
- ↑ Anna Kournikova and Enrique Iglesias 'have twins after secret pregnancy'
- ↑ FOCUS Online: Next child there: Anna Kournikova shows her whole family happiness on Instagram. Retrieved February 26, 2020 .
- ↑ Russian Roulette by Arrest Warrant. Retrieved September 28, 2019 .
personal data | |
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SURNAME | Kurnikowa, Anna Sergejewna |
ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Курникова, Анна Сергеевна (Russian); Kurnikova, Anna Sergeevna (scientific transliteration); Kurnikova, Anna (English); Kournikova, Anna (French) |
BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Russian tennis player |
DATE OF BIRTH | June 7th 1981 |
PLACE OF BIRTH | Moscow |