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Showing posts with label WOMEN. Show all posts
Showing posts with label WOMEN. Show all posts

ANA IVANOVIC

Ana Ivanović (Serbian Cyrillic: Ана Ивановић) Serbian pronunciation: [ˈana iˈvaːnɔvitɕ](born November 6, 1987, in Belgrade, SR Serbia, Yugoslavia) is a former World No. 1 Serbian tennis player. As of November 8, 2010, she is ranked World No. 17 on the WTA rankings. She won the 2008 French Open and was the runner-up in singles at the 2007 French Open and the 2008 Australian Open.

Personal Life

Ivanović's mother Dragana, a lawyer, supports her daughter during most of her matches. Her father Miroslav, a self-employed businessman, attends as many events as he possibly can. Ana has a younger brother, Miloš, with whom she loves to play basketball.


Aside from her tennis career, Ivanović also studies finance at a university in Belgrade and Spanish in her spare time. Her inspiration to begin playing was that time Serbian player, Monika Seleš.

On September 8, 2007, Ivanović became a UNICEF National Ambassador for Serbia, alongside Aleksandar Đorđević, Jelena Janković and Emir Kusturica. She takes a special interest in the fields of education and child protection. Ivanović visited a primary school in Serbia during her inauguration and said that she is "also looking forward to going into the classroom and meeting many kids."

Ivanović confirmed in November 2008 that she was romantically involved with Spanish tennis player Fernando Verdasco, but it was reported that the relationship ended in January 2009. Ivanović was then in a relationship with Australia's golf player Adam Scott but their relationship apparently ended in August 2010. Some of her best friends include close childhood family friend Novak Djokovic, whom she has known since the age of 5, and current ATP World No. 1 Rafael Nadal.

She admires former No. 1 Roger Federer, for his professionalism on and off the court. They've met during the Wilson Player Party, Ivanovic interviewing Federer for the Tennis Channel, and after Federer won the French Open 2009. She admitted this during her press conference after defeating Samantha Stosur in her third round match in Wimbledon 2009.

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ANNA KOURNIKOVA

Anna Sergeyevna Kournikova (Russian: Анна Сергеевна Ку́рникова; born 7 June 1981) is a Russian American professional tennis player and model. Her celebrity status made her one of the best known tennis players worldwide.

At the peak of her fame, fans looking for images of Kournikova made her name one of the most common search strings on the Internet search engine Google.

Although also successful in singles, reaching No. 8 in the world in 2000, Kournikova's specialty has been doubles, where she has at times been the World No. 1 player. With Martina Hingis as her partner, she won Grand Slam titles in Australia in 1999 and 2002.



Based on their looks, Hingis and Kournikova facetiously referred to themselves as the "Spice Girls of Tennis".

Kournikova's professional tennis career has been curtailed for the past several years, and possibly ended, by serious back and spinal problems. She currently resides in Miami Beach, Florida, and plays in occasional exhibitions and in doubles for the St. Louis Aces of World Team Tennis.


Personal Life
Kournikova started dating pop star Enrique Iglesias in late 2001 (she appeared in his video, "Escape"), and rumors that the couple had secretly married circulated in 2003 and again in 2005.

Kournikova herself has consistently refused to directly confirm or deny the status of her personal relationships. But in May 2007, Enrique Iglesias was (mistakenly, as he would clarify later) quoted in the New York Sun that he had no intention of marrying Kournikova and settling down because they had split up.

The singer would later deny these rumors of "divorce" or simply separation. In June 2008, Iglesias told the Daily Star that he had married Kournikova the previous year and that they are currently separated.

Enrique has stated in interviews after that it was simply a joke, and they are still very much together. In an interview with Graham Norton in 2010, Kournikova confirmed that she and Iglesias have been together for over eight years but have no plans to marry in the near future.

Kournikova has a younger brother, Allan. She became an American citizen in late 2009.


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ZHANG NING

Zhang Ning (simplified Chinese: 张宁; traditional Chinese: 張寧; Pinyin: Zhāng Níng; born 19 May 1975 in Jinzhou, Liaoning, China) is a female badminton player from the People's Republic of China.

She won the Olympic gold medal twice for women's singles in both 2004 and 2008.

She has played badminton on the world scene since the mid-1990s and has been particularly successful since 2002 while in her late twenties and early thirties, relatively late for singles at the highest level, and especially for top players in the Chinese system who are developed very early.

She is the only player of either sex to win consecutive Olympic singles gold medals.


Zhang first represented China in Uber Cup (women's world team championship) competition in 1994 and last represented it in 2006. Though she was not always chosen to play in each of the biennial editions of this tournament, her professional career is the longest of any Chinese player to date.

Having previously announced her plans to retire after the 2008 Olympic Games, a retirement ceremony for Zhang and other retiring members of the Chinese national team was held at the 2008 China Open Badminton Championships in Shanghai in November 2008. After her retirement, Zhang Ning immediately began working with the Chinese national team in coaching and developing the up and coming women's singles players.


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ZHENG JIE

Zheng Jie (simplified Chinese: 郑洁; traditional Chinese: 鄭潔; pinyin: Zhèng Jié; born 5 July 1983 in Chengdu, Sichuan) is a Chinese professional tennis player. Her career high ranking is World No. 15 which she achieved on May 18, 2009. As of May 17, 2010, Zheng is ranked World No. 24 in singles and World No. 16 in doubles.

Zheng is one of the most successful tennis players in China's history. She has won three WTA singles titles at Hobart in 2005 and Estoril and Stockholm in 2006. She has also won twelve doubles titles, eleven of them with Yan Zi including Wimbledon and the Australian Open in 2006.

Her career high doubles ranking is World No. 3. Zheng has reached the singles semi-finals at the 2008 Wimbledon Championships, becoming the first Chinese player to reach the semi-finals at a Grand Slam, and at the 2010 Australian Open. She also won the bronze medal in doubles with Yan Zi at the 2008 Beijing Olympics and was the first Chinese player to defeat a World No. 1 (by defeating Ana Ivanović at Wimbledon in 2008) as well as the first Chinese player to reach the top 15.


Zheng's game is characterized by consistency and intellect. She is not the strongest player, but makes up for this with her careful thinking about where to place her shots and willingness to change game plans if a strategy is not working.

Her shots are very well placed and can be quite deep in the court, making Zheng an excellent defensive counterpuncher. Zheng has good foot speed which allows her to keep points in play that normally would be winners ; so few shots get by her that some admiring journalists have begun calling her "the Great Wall of China."

Having played many years in doubles, Zheng is also a comfortable net player. Zheng has powerful ground strokes that are often deep enough to push opponents off the baseline. Zheng's best shot is her backhand. Zheng's main weakness is her serve; however she is sometimes able to neutralize her weak serve with her quickness or by serving to the body or to the opponent's weaker groundstroke.

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MARIA SHARAPOVA

Maria Yuryevna Sharapova (Russian: Мари́я Ю́рьевна Шара́пова​, Mariya Yur’evna Shara'pova [pronounced sha-RAH-po-va] Russian pronunciation: [mɐˈrʲijə ʂɐˈrapəvə]; born April 19, 1987) is a former World No. 1 Russian professional tennis player.

Sharapova has won 22 WTA singles titles, 3 WTA doubles titles and 3 Grand Slam singles titles, including 2004 Wimbledon, 2006 US Open and 2008 Australian Open. She was also runner-up at the 2007 Australian Open. She has also won the year-ending Sony Ericsson Championships in 2004. The Women's Tennis Association has ranked her World No. 1 in singles on 4 separate occasions. She regained this ranking for the fourth time on May 19, 2008. She became the World No. 1 for the first time on Aug 22, 2005. She is currently ranked World No. 12.

Sharapova made her professional breakthrough in 2004 when, at age 17, she upset two-time defending champion and top seed Serena Williams in the 2004 Wimbledon final for her first Grand Slam singles title. She entered the top ten of the WTA Rankings with this win.


Despite not winning a major in 2005, Sharapova briefly held the number one ranking, and reached three Grand Slam semifinals, losing to the eventual champion each time. She ultimately won her second major at the 2006 US Open defeating then-World No. 1 Amélie Mauresmo in the semifinals and World No. 2 Justine Henin in the final.

Sharapova's 2007 season was plagued with a chronic shoulder injury, and saw her ranking fall out of the top 5 for the first time in two years. She ultimately won her third Grand Slam at the 2008 Australian Open, defeating Henin in the quarterfinals and Ana Ivanović in the final.

After reclaiming the number one ranking in May 2008, Sharapova's shoulder problems re-surfaced, ultimately requiring surgery in October and forcing her out of the game for nearly ten months. Sharapova returned in May 2009 and was ranked No. 126 in the world due to her extensive lay-off. Since her comeback, Sharapova has won 3 singles titles (bringing her career total to 22) and recovered her ranking to World No. 12.

Sharapova's public profile extends beyond tennis, as she has been featured in a number of modeling assignments, including a feature in Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. Also she has been featured in many advertisements including: Nike, Prince, Canon and many more, also being the face of many fashion houses, primarily Cole Haan. Sharapova was the most searched-for athlete on Yahoo! in both 2005 and 2008.

Since February 2007, she has been a United Nations Development Project Goodwill Ambassador, concerned specifically with the Chernobyl Recovery and Development Programme.

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LI NA

Li Na (Chinese: 李娜; pinyin: Lǐ Nà; born February 26, 1982 in Wuhan, Hubei), is a Chinese professional tennis player. She became the first Chinese player to reach the top 30 (in June 2006), top 20 (in August 2006) and top 10 (2010).

Li was also the first Chinese tennis player to reach a Grand Slam quarterfinals, doing so at Wimbledon in 2006. She has been one of the most successful tennis players in the country's history and with her highest ranking achieved on February 2009 as Asia and China's No. 1 female player, with a world ranking of No. 10 at the time. By reaching the semi-finals of the 2010 Australian Open, Li became the first Chinese player to enter the top 10. She is currently ranked World No. 11.

From the central China metropolis of Wuhan, Li was a badminton player when she was 6 but her coach kept noticing that she looked as if she were playing tennis. By the time she was 8, her coach asked her parents if she could switch to tennis. Her father died when she was 14.


Between 1999 and 2004, Li won 20 women's singles titles : 19 ITF events and one—the first ever won by a Chinese woman—on the WTA Tour. In January 2008, she won her second WTA Tour title after a drought of over three and a quarter years.

She is noted in her playing style for quick reflexes and athleticism around the court and fast groundstrokes which she scatters unpredictably to all corners of the playing surface.

Li also frequently enters doubles tournaments at events alongside singles, and has won two WTA doubles titles and 16 further ITF doubles events. Her early success in doubles came mostly with Ting Li; but more recently she has made a habit of forming temporary women's doubles partnerships with players with whom she has previously enjoyed a healthy rivalry through repeated head-to-head meetings in singles tournaments, notably Liu Nan-Nan, Nicole Pratt, Yan Zi, Jelena Janković, and Peng Shuai.

Her career has been plagued by injuries that have interrupted her from playing for lengthy periods, and often preventing her from being highly ranked. She suffered a two-year hiatus from competition in her early 20s, lost several months at the height of the 2005 season to an ankle injury, and lost the second half of 2007 to a rib injury.

During the 2010 Australian Open, Li and compatriot Zheng Jie made history for becoming the first two Chinese players to reach the top four of a Grand Slam tournament simultaneously.
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STEFFI GRAF

Stefanie Maria Graf (born June 14, 1969, in Mannheim, Baden-Württemberg, West Germany) is a former World No. 1 female tennis player.

Graf is the only player to have won all four Grand Slam singles tournaments (Wimbledon, the US Open, the French Open and the Australian Open) at least four times each. In total, she won 22 Grand Slam singles titles, second among male and female players only to Margaret Court's 24. In 1988, Graf became the first and only tennis player (male or female) to achieve the Calendar Year Golden Slam by winning all four Grand Slam singles titles and the Olympic gold medal in the same calendar year.

Graf was ranked World No. 1 by the Women's Tennis Association (WTA) for a record 377 total weeks—the longest period for which any player, male or female, has held the number one ranking since the WTA and the Association of Tennis Professionals began issuing rankings.


She also holds the open era record for finishing as the year-end World No. 1 the most times, having done so on eight occasions.[2] She won 107 singles titles, which ranks her third on the WTA's all-time list after Martina Navratilova (167 titles) and Chris Evert (154 titles).

A notable feature of Graf's game was her versatility across all playing surfaces. She won six French Open singles titles (second to Evert) and seven Wimbledon singles titles (third behind Navratilova and Helen Wills Moody). She is the only singles player to have achieved a Calendar Year Grand Slam while playing on all three major types of tennis courts (grass courts, clay courts and hard courts), as the Calendar Year Grand Slams won by other players before her occurred when the Australian and US Opens were still played on grass. Graf reached thirteen consecutive Grand Slam singles finals, from the 1987 French Open through to the 1990 French Open, winning nine of them. She played in 36 Grand Slam singles tournaments from the 1987 French Open, her first Grand Slam win, through the 1999 French Open, her last Grand Slam win, reaching the finals 29 times and winning 22 titles. She reached a total of 31 Grand Slam singles finals, third overall behind Evert (34 finals) and Navratilova (32 finals).

Graf is considered by some to be the greatest female player. Billie Jean King said in 1999, "Steffi is definitely the greatest women's tennis player of all time." Martina Navratilova has included Graf on her list of great players. In December 1999, Graf was named the greatest female tennis player of the 20th century by a panel of experts assembled by the Associated Press.[5] Tennis writer Steve Flink, in his book The Greatest Tennis Matches of the Twentieth Century, named her as the best female player of the 20th century.

Graf retired in 1999 while she was ranked World No. 3. She married former World No. 1 men's tennis player Andre Agassi in October 2001 and they have two children, Jaden Gil and Jaz Elle.

From Wikipedia

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SUSI SUSANTI

Lucia Francisca Susi Susanti (born in Tasikmalaya, West Java on 11 February 1971); Chinese : 王蓮香; Pinyin : Wang Lianxiang) is a retired Chinese Indonesian badminton player. Relatively small of stature, she combined quick and graceful movement with elegant shotmaking technique, and rates among the most successful players in the history of the women's game. Sometimes her name is also spelled Susy Susanti.

She won the women's singles gold medal at the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona, Spain and the bronze medal at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, United States. Her gold medal in Barcelona was the first Indonesian's gold medal at Olympic Games events. She retired from the world badminton circuit not long after her marriage to Alan Budikusuma (魏仁芳) (who had also won a badminton singles gold medal at the 1992 Summer Olympics) in February of 1997.


Susanti was the most dominant women's singles player of the early to mid 1990s, winning the All-England in 1990, 1991, 1993 and 1994, the World Badminton Grand Prix finale five times consecutively from 1990 to 1994, and the IBF World Championships in 1993. She is the only female player to hold the Olympic, World Championship, and All-England singles titles simultaneously. She won the Japan Open three times and the Indonesian Open five times.

She also won numerous Badminton Grand Prix Series events and five Badminton World Cups. She led the Indonesian team to victory over perennial champion China in the 1994 and 1996 Uber Cup (women's world team) competitions. All of this came during a relatively strong period in women's international badminton. Her chief competitors early in her prime years were the Chinese players Tang Jiuhong and Huang Hua, and, later, China's Ye Zhaoying and the Korean star Bang Soo-hyun.

Susanti was inducted into the International Badminton Federation (IBF, currently BWF) Hall of Fame in May 2004, and received the Herbert Scheele Trophy in 2002.
[edit] Life after competitive badminton

She ran a badminton racket company branded as "Astec" ("Alan-Susi Technology") with her husband, Alan Budikusuma after retirement. Now they run a badminton club in North Jakarta.

Susy and Alan have 3 children: Laurencia Averina (born 1999), Albertus Edward (born 2000) and Sebastianus Frederick (born 2003).


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