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)
Grand Slam record
Double
Career record:	200: 71
Career title:	16
Highest ranking:	1 (November 22, 1999)
Weeks as No. 1:	10
Grand Slam record
Mixed
Grand Slam record
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

2002 with Martina Hingis

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

No.	date	competition	category	Topping	Partner	Final opponents	Result
1.	September 27, 1998	Tokyo	WTA Tier II	Hard court	Monica Seles	Mary Joe Fernández Arantxa Sánchez Vicario	6: 4, 6: 4
2.	January 31, 1999	Australian Open	Grand Slam	Hard court	Martina Hingis	Lindsay Davenport Natallja Swerawa	7: 5, 6: 3
3.	March 13, 1999	Indian Wells	WTA Tier I	Hard court	Martina Hingis	Mary Joe Fernández Jana Novotná	6: 2, 6: 2
4th	May 9, 1999	Rome	WTA Tier I	sand	Martina Hingis	Alexandra Fusai Nathalie Tauziat	6: 2, 6: 2
5.	June 19, 1999	Eastbourne	WTA Tier II	race	Martina Hingis	Jana Novotná Natallja Swerawa	6: 4, task
6th	November 21, 1999	new York	WTA Tour Championships	Carpet (hall)	Martina Hingis	Larisa Neiland Arantxa Sánchez Vicario	6: 4, 6: 4
7th	January 8, 2000	Gold coast	WTA Tier III	Hard court	Julie Halard-Decugis	Sabine Appelman's Rita Grande	6: 3, 6: 0
8th.	May 7, 2000	Hamburg	WTA Tier II	sand	Natallja Sverava	Nicole Arendt Manon Bollegraf	6: 7 5 , 6: 2, 6: 4
9.	October 8, 2000	Filderstadt	WTA Tier II	Hard court (hall)	Martina Hingis	Arantxa Sánchez Vicario Barbara Schett	6: 4, 6: 2
10.	October 15, 2000	Zurich	WTA Tier I	Hard court (hall)	Martina Hingis	Kimberly Po Anne-Gaëlle Sidot	6: 3, 6: 4
11.	November 12, 2000	Philadelphia	WTA Tier II	Carpet (hall)	Martina Hingis	Lisa Raymond Rennae Stubbs	6: 2, 7: 5
12.	November 19, 2000	new York	WTA Tour Championships	Carpet (hall)	Martina Hingis	Nicole Arendt Manon Bollegraf	6: 2, 6: 3
13.	January 13, 2001	Sydney	WTA Tier II	Hard court	Barbara Schett	Lisa Raymond Rennae Stubbs	6: 2, 7: 5
14th	October 7, 2001	Moscow	WTA Tier I	Carpet (hall)	Martina Hingis	Jelena Dementjewa Lina Krasnoruzkaja	7: 6 1 , 6: 3
15th	January 27, 2002	Australian Open	Grand Slam	Hard court	Martina Hingis	Daniela Hantuchová Arantxa Sánchez Vicario	6: 2, 6: 7 4 , 6: 1
16.	September 15, 2002	Shanghai	WTA Tier IV	Hard court	Janet Lee	Rika Fujiwara Ai Sugiyama	7: 5, 6: 3

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

Commons : Anna Kurnikowa  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• 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

1. ↑ Panagiotis Kolokythas: Top 100 search terms 2001 at Lycos. In: PC world . December 20, 2001, accessed February 13, 2016 . 
2. ↑ [1] , Bunte.de, accessed on April 3, 2014
3. ↑ Anna Kournikova and Enrique Iglesias 'have twins after secret pregnancy'
4. ↑ FOCUS Online: Next child there: Anna Kournikova shows her whole family happiness on Instagram. Retrieved February 26, 2020 . 
5. ↑ Russian Roulette by Arrest Warrant. Retrieved September 28, 2019 .