Maria Kirilenko

Maria Kirilenko
Country (sports)	Russia
Residence	Moscow, Russia
Height	5' 8in (1.73 m)
Turned pro	2001
Plays	Right
Prize money	$657,148
Singles
Career record	364–257
Career titles	1 (2 ITF Circuit titles)
Highest ranking	No. 23 (January 30, 2006)
Grand Slam singles results
Australian Open	3rd Round (2006)
French Open	2nd Round (2004)
Wimbledon	2nd Round (2005)
US Open	3rd Round (2003)
Doubles
Career record	255–150
Career titles	2
Highest ranking	No. 21 (February 6, 2006)

Maria Yuryevna Kirilenko (Russian:Мария Ю́рьевна КИРИЛЕНКО; born January 25 1987 in Moscow) is a Russian professional tennis player. She won her first WTA Tour title in 2005, beating Anna-Lena Groenefeld 6-3, 6-4 in the China Open. She is a good friend of Maria Sharapova. She is affectionatly called Makiri.

Maria started playing tennis when she was just seven years old, when her father Yuri introduced her to the game in Moscow. She won the junior event at the 2002 Canadian Open, as well as the 2002 US Open junior tournament. In December 2004 she played in a tennis exhibition in Tampa, Florida to raise money for the Florida Hurricane Relief Fund.

At the 2006 Australian Open, she gained media attention for wearing an adidas outfit designed by British fashion designer Stella McCartney and herself.^[1]

Tennis Career

Maria started showing a passion towards tennis aged 5, but it was difficult to get the practice in while she attending school but hours of fierce training started to pay off as she won severel tournaments. When Maria was twelve years old, an Honored Master of sports, Elena Brioukhovets, saw her while training. She noticed her at once - if one could pay more attention to this girl, - Elena thought, - she might show very impressive results. All the next year Elena watched Maria making progress, and then offered her to work together. From now on tennis became not only a profession but sort of a life style for Maria. A three-year program was made, and a special team was selected. Uncertain romantic dreams of having a success turned into a strategic task - to be one of the best junior tennis-players in the world. And in less than three years Maria was the number one in her age group, and the number two in the group under eighteen. Working hard and making progress, she started to believe in herself - and many others also believed in her, too. For instance, the well-known tennis-players Yevgeni Kafelnikov, Andrey Olkhovsky and Maxim Mirny, who created an organization supporting young tennis-players. They helped Maria to arrange her training-process and to attend tournaments. All the rest depended on her and her progress. She was lucky to have a good chance - but she had to make an effective use of it. It feels great when you wake up and realize you are a star. But first, you have to win eleven matches one after another. In 2002 Maria has become one of the youngest winners of the Canadian Open and the US Open Junior Tournaments. Now, there is a further step to be made. Since September 2002 Maria started participating in WTA events. she made a lot of progress in WTA events but was setback by injury in 2004 and dropped down the rankings, whilst missing out on valuable experiance. But in towards the end of 2005 she had climbed right up the rankings and won her first title in Beijing. She has be recognised as one of the up and coming players of 2006 and is expected to break into the top 20.

WTA Titles

Singles (1)

No.	Date	Tournament	Surface	Tier	Opponent in the final	Score
1.	09-05	China Beijing	Hard	Tier II	Anna-Lena Groenefeld (Germany)	6-3 6-4

References

^ Lloyd-McDonald, Holly (19 Jan 2006). "Ruffles ace summer tennis". {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |org= ignored (help) <-- Gives a 404 error

External links

This biographical article related to tennis is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.