José Luis Vázquez del Carpio

OCTOBER'S GIRL:
ANA KOURNIKOVA

Ana Kournikova

Anna Kournikova was born June 7th 1981 in Moscow. Her parents names are Allah and Sergei. She received her first tennis racquet at 5 years old when her parents sold their TV to buy her one for Christmas. She played in a club near her place until age 11. After which 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 professional title in 1999 at Midland, Michigan, an ITF tournament. She was 5th favorite 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 in the 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... She's currently 13th in the world and hopes to break the top 5 for next year...

Kournikova won her first grand slam title this year (1999) with Martina Hingis in doubles at the Australian Open. Since then, they have played regularly together and have rapidly became one of the best pairs... Anna became #2 in doubles in September 1999, quite a good performance considering she didn't compete in Wimbledon or in the US Open...