Anastasia Myskina

Anastasiya Andreyevna Myskina (Russian: Анастасия Мыскина; IPA: [ɐnəstɐˈsʲijə ˈmɨskʲɪnə]; born 8 July 1981) is a Russian former professional tennis player. She won the 2004 French Open singles title, becoming the first Russian female tennis player to win a Grand Slam singles title. Subsequent to this victory, she rose to no. 3 in the WTA rankings, becoming the first Russian female tennis player to reach the top 3 in the history of the rankings. In September 2004, she reached a career-high ranking of world No. 2. Although she has not officially retired, Myskina has been inactive on the WTA Tour since May 2007.

1999–2001

Myskina was born in Moscow and turned professional in 2000, the year in which she broke into the WTA top 500. She won her first WTA title in Palermo in only her second appearance in the main draw of a WTA tournament. She made her debut in a Grand Slam tournament at the US Open and the Fed Cup (playing doubles). In 2000, Myskina scored first career top-20 victory over no. 17 Barbara Schett en route to the Sopot semifinal. She debuted at Roland Garros (which she would later win) and Wimbledon. She played in the Sydney Olympics and reached her first Tier I quarterfinal in Zürich, where she lost to world no. 1 Martina Hingis. Myskina was plagued by injury that forced her to miss the Australian Open. As a result, she fell out of the top 100. She then had a solid indoor performance, reaching the quarterfinals in Leipzig and the semifinals in Moscow, her first career Tier I SF.

2002

2002 was a breakthrough season for Myskina. She scored her first Top 10 win over defending champion Jelena Dokić in Rome, and entered the Top 20 afterwards. Myskina reached back-to-back grass court finals in Birmingham and Eastbourne, and rose to number 15 in the rankings. She won her first Tier II 2002 Brasil Open – Women's Singles title in Bahia, and another runner-up finish in Leipzig confirmed her spot in WTA Tour Championships. She finished the 2002 season in the top 15 for the first time in her career.

2003

Myskina obtained an invite from the Hong Kong Tennis Patrons' Association to play The Hong Kong Ladies Challenge 2003 and reached the Australian Open quarterfinals (her first Grand Slam quarterfinal appearance of six). After claiming the title in Doha and defeating friend Elena Likhovtseva in the first all-Russian final in WTA history, she cracked the Top 10. Established her place among the game elite with a win in Sarasota, Myskina also had mediocre results during the summer season were followed by a quarterfinal appearance at the US Open, back-to-back titles in Leipzig (defeating No.1 Kim Clijsters and No.2 Justine Henin) and Moscow, which was her first Tier I title. She became the first Russian woman to win the Kremlin Cup), and she made the finals in Philadelphia. Myskina qualified for the Tour Championships. She earned more than $US1 million in prize money, and finished the year in the Top 10 for the first time in her career.

2004: best season, French Open champion

2004 was Myskina's best season to date. Myskina successfully defended her Doha title, afterwards becoming the second Russian woman to break into the Top 5, the first was Natasha Zvereva, who rose to number 5 in the World in May 1989. The highlight of Myskina's 2004 season was a victory at the French Open, where she saved match points in the fourth round against Svetlana Kuznetsova, then defeated former world number 1 players Venus Williams and Jennifer Capriati, en route to a 6–1, 6–2 victory over compatriot Elena Dementieva in the first all-Russian Grand Slam final, thus making her the first female Russian to win a Grand Slam singles title. Prior to her French Open victory, she had never made it past the 2nd round at Roland Garros. Following her win in Paris, she rose to No.3 in the rankings. She reached the final in San Diego, breaking Maria Sharapova's 14-match winning streak that included Wimbledon and beat Vera Zvonareva 17–15 in a third set tie-break, saving 9 match points, winning the longest final set tie-break in WTA Tour history. She lost in the 2004 Athens Olympics semifinal to Justine Henin, having led 5–1 in the final set. She rose to a career-high number 2 in the rankings. Myskina recovered from the tough loss to win the Kremlin Cup for the second straight year, and beat number 2 Lindsay Davenport for the first time in 5 meetings en route to doing so. She finished on the top of her group at the WTA Tour Championships, and scored her second win over a world number 1 by again beating Davenport, but lost in the semifinals to the eventual champion Sharapova. Myskina led Russia to its first Fed Cup title, winning 8 out of 9 matches played, including winning all of her 3 matches in the final. Finished the season as world number 3, a career-best year-end rank for a female Russian, and won over $2 millions in prize money, having scored ten Top 10 wins during the 2004 season.

2005

Myskina with Zvonareva

2005 brought Myskina mixed fortunes. She spent the first half of 2005 poorly, due to personal issues regarding her mother's health. Myskina surrendered her Doha and Roland Garros titles in the very first round, and became the first Roland Garros champion to lose in the opening round. Bringing an 8–10 win-loss record to the beginning of the grass court season, Myskina managed to turn it around at Wimbledon by reaching her career-first quarterfinal at the event with three comeback wins over Jelena Janković (from a 1–5 final set deficit), and over Dementieva (being 1–6, 0–3 down and facing match points in the second set tiebreak). She fell out of the Top 10 in August. She then won a tenth career title in Kolkata beating lower-ranked opponents. She did, however, beat the 2005 Wimbledon champion Venus Williams in Fed Cup semifinals, but then lost both of her matches in the final. Myskina finished inside Top 15 for the fourth straight time.

2006

2006 was another disappointing season for Myskina. Having had several chances to return to the Top 10, she failed to convert any of them. In Warsaw, she suffered her worst defeat in terms of the rankings on WTA Tour level, falling to a wild card, Agnieszka Radwańska, then ranked No. 309. At Roland Garros, Myskina defeated 2005 quarter-finalist Ana Ivanovic in the third round before losing to the eventual champion Justine Henin-Hardenne in the fourth round.

She showed splashes of her old form during the grass season, having reached the Eastbourne final beautifully, losing to Justine Henin-Hardenne in a close final concluded in a third set tiebreak. She made the Wimbledon quarterfinals, but lost to eventual champion Amélie Mauresmo in three sets. She had solid performance at the first two Grand Slams, making the 4th round on each occasion. After Wimbledon, her game completely fall apart. Along with second straight runner-up finish at the Tier IV event in Stockholm, she did not manage to win a single match in North America, going 0–3 during the US Open Series. The downfall reached its nadir when she became the first person to lose a Grand Slam match against future World No.1 Victoria Azarenka at the US Open, having entered the event under an injury cloud carried over from New Haven. Anastasia sat out for a majority of the indoor season with a foot and toe injury, pulling out of Stuttgart and her home tournament in Moscow. She returned to play in Zürich, but lost to then unknown Swiss qualifier Timea Bacsinszky, 6–3, 6–3.

2007

Myskina only played two singles matches, having been injured. She lost both of those matches; including to Meghann Shaughnessy at the French Open, only winning a game. As of 25 July 2007, Myskina fell to the same ranking as the wildcard she lost to, Agnieszka Radwańska, of Number 309. She also is unranked for doubles. Myskina is taking time off due to a career-threatening injury.

Myskina dated HC Dynamo Moscow hockey player Aleksandr Stepanov.

In October 2002, Myskina had a series of photos taken for GQ magazine by the photographer Mark Seliger for a spread in the October 2002 edition of GQ, in which one approved photo of her fully clothed was published. After she won the French Open in 2004, some photographs from the shoot, in which she appeared topless, were published in the July/August 2004 issue of the Russian magazine Medved (Bear). In August 2004, she filed an US$8 million lawsuit against the men's magazine GQ for allowing her topless photographs to appear in a Russian magazine Medved without her consent. On 19 June 2005, U.S. District Judge Michael Mukasey, later United States Attorney General, ruled that Anastasia Myskina could not stop the distribution of the topless photos, because she had signed a release. Myskina had claimed that she did not understand the photo release form and that she was not fluent in English at the time.

Myskina announced that she was pregnant with her first child, due in May 2008. On 28 April 2008 Myskina gave birth to her first child, a boy named Zhenya (Yevgenyi). In August 2010 she gave birth to a second son named Georgiy. On 3 November 2011 it was reported that she is pregnant with a third child, that just like the first two, will be a son. When she was interviewed about parenting with Tennis.com she quoted the following:

Being a mother is so different; it’s not that it’s quieter or faster, it’s just different. Being a mom is tough. You understand what’s good for you and the babies, while tennis is just a game. It’s fun because you have a different life when you step on the court but when the baby is sick you go crazy. When I lost a match it was really bad time, now I know it was a great time, so being a mom is tougher.

— Anastasia Myskina, Tennis.com

On 1 March 2012 she gave birth to a third child, named Pavel.

Grand Slam finals

Singles: 1 (1–0)

Outcome	Year	Championship	Surface	Opponent	Score
Winner	2004	French Open	Clay	Elena Dementieva	6–1, 6–2

Olympic finals

Singles: 1 (0–1)

Outcome	Year	Championship	Surface	Opponent	Score
4th place	2004	Athens Olympics	Hard	Alicia Molik	3–6, 4–6

WTA Tier I finals

Singles: 3 (2 titles, 1 runner-up)

Outcome	Year	Championship	Surface	Opponent	Score
Winner	2003	Moscow	Carpet (i)	Amélie Mauresmo	6–2, 6–4
Runner-up	2004	San Diego	Hard	Lindsay Davenport	6–1, 6–1
Winner	2004	Moscow (2)	Carpet (i)	Elena Dementieva	7–5, 6–0

Singles (10)

No.	Date	Tournament	Surface	Opponent in the final	Score in the final
1.	18 July 1999	Palermo, Italy	Clay	Ángeles Montolio	3–6, 7–6(7–3), 6–2
2.	14 September 2002	Bahia, Brazil	Hard	Eleni Daniilidou	6–3, 0–6, 6–2
3.	16 February 2003	Doha, Qatar (1)	Hard	Elena Likhovtseva	6–3, 6–1
4.	6 April 2003	Sarasota, USA	Clay	Alicia Molik	6–4, 6–1
5.	28 September 2003	Leipzig, Germany	Carpet (i)	Justine Henin	3–6, 6–3, 6–3
6.	5 October 2003	Moscow, Russia (1)	Carpet (i)	Amélie Mauresmo	6–2, 6–4
7.	6 March 2004	Doha, Qatar (2)	Hard	Svetlana Kuznetsova	4–6, 6–4, 6–4
8.	3 June 2004	French Open, Paris, France	Clay	Elena Dementieva	6–1, 6–2
9.	17 October 2004	Moscow, Russia (2)	Carpet (i)	Elena Dementieva	7–5, 6–0
10.	25 September 2005	Kolkata, India	Carpet (i)	Karolina Šprem	6–2, 6–2

Runners-up (9)

No.	Date	Tournament	Surface	Opponent in the final	Score in the final
1.	16 June 2002	Birmingham, UK	Grass	Jelena Dokić	6–2, 6–3
2.	22 June 2002	Eastbourne, UK (1)	Grass	Chanda Rubin	6–1, 6–3
3.	29 September 2002	Leipzig, Germany	Carpet (i)	Serena Williams	6–3, 6–2
4.	2 November 2003	Philadelphia, USA	Hard (i)	Amélie Mauresmo	5–7, 6–0, 6–2
5.	1 August 2004	San Diego, USA	Hard	Lindsay Davenport	6–1, 6–1
6.	14 August 2005	Stockholm, Sweden (1)	Hard	Katarina Srebotnik	7–5, 6–2
7.	27 May 2006	Istanbul, Turkey	Clay	Shahar Pe'er	1–6, 6–3, 7–6(7–3)
8.	24 June 2006	Eastbourne, UK (2)	Grass	Justine Henin	4–6, 6–1, 7–6(7–5)
9.	13 August 2006	Stockholm, Sweden (2)	Hard	Zheng Jie	6–4, 6–1

Doubles (6)

Wins (5)

No.	Date	Tournament	Surface	Partner	Opponent in the final	Score in the final
1.	19 September 2004	Bali, Indonesia	Hard	Ai Sugiyama	Svetlana Kuznetsova Arantxa Sánchez Vicario	6–3, 7–5
2.	17 October 2004	Moscow, Russia	Carpet (i)	Vera Zvonareva	Virginia Ruano Pascual Paola Suárez	6–3, 4–6, 6–2
3.	25 September 2005	Kolkata, India	Carpet (i)	Elena Likhovtseva	Neha Uberoi Shikha Uberoi	6–1, 6–0
4.	9 October 2005	Filderstadt, Germany	Hard (i)	Daniela Hantuchová	Květa Peschke Francesca Schiavone	6–0, 3–6, 7–5
5.	7 May 2006	Warsaw, Poland	Clay	Elena Likhovtseva	Anabel Medina Garrigues Katarina Srebotnik	6–3, 6–4

Runner-up (1)

No.	Date	Tournament	Surface	Partner	Opponent in the final	Score in the final
1.	5 October 2003	Moscow, Russia	Carpet (i)	Vera Zvonareva	Nadia Petrova Meghann Shaughnessy	6–3, 6–4

To prevent confusion and double counting, information in this table is updated only once a tournament or the player's participation in the tournament has concluded. This table is current through the 2007 French Open, which ended on June 10, 2007.

Myskina's win-loss record against certain players who have been ranked World No. 10 or higher is as follows:

Player	Record	W%	Hardcourt	Clay	Grass	Carpet
Number 1 ranked players
/ Jelena Janković	3–0	100%	0–0	1–0	2–0	0–0
Arantxa Sánchez Vicario	1–0	100%	0–0	1–0	0–0	0–0
/ Ana Ivanovic	1–0	100%	0–0	1–0	0–0	0–0
Dinara Safina	4–1	80%	3–1	1–0	0–0	0–0
Victoria Azarenka	2–1	66.7%	1–1	1–0	0–0	0–0
Maria Sharapova	3–2	60%	3–2	0–0	0–0	0–0
Venus Williams	2–3	40%	0–1	2–1	0–0	0–1
Martina Hingis	1–2	33.3%	1–2	0–0	0–0	0–0
Kim Clijsters	3–7	30%	0–5	0–2	1–0	2–0
Jennifer Capriati	2–5	28.6%	1–2	1–2	0–1	0–0
Lindsay Davenport	2–6	25%	1–6	0–0	0–0	1–0
Justine Henin	2–8	20%	1–5	0–2	0–1	1–0
Amélie Mauresmo	1–8	11.1%	0–3	0–1	0–3	1–1
Serena Williams	0–5	0%	0–2	0–1	0–0	0–2
Number 2 ranked players
Vera Zvonareva	3–1	75%	2–0	0–1	0–0	1–0
Conchita Martínez	3–1	75%	2–1	0–0	1–0	0–0
Svetlana Kuznetsova	4–2	66.7%	1–1	2–1	1–0	0–0
Agnieszka Radwańska	0–1	0%	0–0	0–1	0–0	0–0
Number 3 ranked players
Mary Pierce	4–2	66.7%	2–0	1–2	0–0	1–0
Elena Dementieva	9–6	60%	3–3	4–0	1–0	1–3
Nadia Petrova	3–2	60%	1–2	1–0	0–0	1–0
Amanda Coetzer	2–2	50%	2–1	0–0	0–1	0–0
Nathalie Tauziat	0–1	0%	0–0	0–0	0–1	0–0
Number 4 ranked players
Francesca Schiavone	3–0	100%	2–0	1–0	0–0	0–0
/ Iva Majoli	3–0	100%	0–0	1–0	0–0	2–0
Samantha Stosur	2–0	100%	1–0	0–0	0–0	1–0
Magdalena Maleeva	4–1	80%	1–0	0–0	1–0	2–1
/ Jelena Dokić	2–4	33.3%	1–2	1–1	0–1	0–0
Mary Joe Fernandez	0–1	0%	0–1	0–0	0–0	0–0
/ Anke Huber	0–1	0%	0–0	0–1	0–0	0–0
Number 5 ranked players
Daniela Hantuchová	2–0	100%	0–0	1–0	1–0	0–0
Anna Chakvetadze	1–1	50%	1–1	0–0	0–0	0–0
Number 6 ranked players
Flavia Pennetta	1–0	100%	1–0	0–0	0–0	0–0
Chanda Rubin	5–2	71%	4–0	0–1	0–1	1–0
Number 7 ranked players
Marion Bartoli	1–0	100%	1–0	0–0	0–0	0–0
Barbara Schett	3–1	75%	1–0	1–0	0–0	1–1
Patty Schnyder	2–3	40%	1–3	0–0	1–0	0–0
Roberta Vinci	1–2	33%	0–1	0–1	1–0	0–0
Nicole Vaidišová	0–1	0%	0–0	0–1	0–0	0–0
Number 8 ranked players
Anna Kournikova	1–0	100%	0–0	0–0	0–0	1–0
Alicia Molik	3–2	60%	1–1	2–0	0–0	0–1
Ai Sugiyama	2–3	40%	1–2	0–0	1–1	0–0
Number 9 ranked players
Roberta Vinci	2–1	66.7%	1–0	1–0	0–1	0–0
Paola Suárez	1–1	50%	0–0	0–1	1–0	0–0
Sandrine Testud	0–1	0%	0–0	0–1	0–0	0–0
Dominique Monami	0–1	0%	0–1	0–0	0–0	0–0
Number 10 ranked players
Timea Bacsinszky	0–1	0%	0–1	0–0	0–0	0–0
/ Karina Habšudová	0–1	0%	0–0	0–0	0–0	0–1
Total	93–94	50%	41–51 (45%)	24–21 (53%)	12–11 (52%)	16–11 (59%)