When, mere days before her triumph at Roland Garros, Svetlana Kuznetsova was asked about the roots of the Russian Revolution, she credited some unlikely heroes for igniting a trend that has seen Sharapova, Myskina, Safina, Dementiev
a, Zvonareva, Petrova, Chakvetadze, etc. rise to the top of the game.
“If you turn back and you see about tennis popularity in Russia, it would be first by Yeltsin, because…he was big in politics, and he pushed a lot [of] tennis in Russia,” Sveta explained. “He got all diplomatic people…people around [the] president to play tennis. So people came. They put money into tennis…Then Kournikova made it big. Doesn’t matter [that] people don’t like her. Doesn’t matter that they say she never won a tournament. I still think she did amazing effort. They made such a big deal about her not winning a tournament. For me, she was a top-10 player. She played semis of Wimbledon. She was very tough. She was No. 1 in doubles. She had an unbelievable achievement. She was very popular and she could do the same thing on court and off the court. It’s a lot credit for her for doing this for Russian tennis.”
It’s true. The now-retired Anna Kournikova, 28, rose as high as No. 8 in the world, but never won a singles title at the WTA Tour level. However, she did win 16 doubles titles, including the ’99 and ’02 Australian Opens (both with Martina Hingis), and a pair of mixed titles with Jonas Bjorkman (’99 Wimbledon) and Max Mirnyi (’00 U.S. Open), while hitting No. 1 in ’99. Plus, she banked more than $3.5 million in prize money, not to mention the endorsement dollars. But let’s face it: she was pigeonholed as a pinup girl from the start, and never really shook that image. And while that may have been tough for her to stomach at times, when it came to spreading the Gospel of Tennis in her homeland, it was the best thing that ever could have happened.
While the blonde-and-ponytailed Kournikova wasn’t exactly viewed as humble in her heyday, on Thursday, the Muscovite-turned-South-Beach-siren, who these days is more likely to be seen lending a hand with the Boys & Girls Club of America or the USO than poaching volleys on a tennis court, deflected Kuznetsova’s praise and pointed directly at the former tennis-happy President of the Russian Federation.
“She’s right about Boris Yeltsin,” Kournikova told Inside Tennis. “That was his favorite sport and he definitely brought a lot of attention to tennis in Russia. That really helped. I remember when I was growing up and playing the Kremlin Cup, he would always come out and watch and it was a big deal. It definitely created a huge buzz. But tennis was always very popular in Russia. It was just very expensive for most people to afford or you had to be really good to in the government system to be able to play and go to the clubs for free. It was not very accessible.”
While athletes like Yevgeny Kafelnikov and Marat Safin were making headlines with Grand Slam success of their own, it was Anna K. who showed a whole generation of Russian girls that they could achieve their dreams.
“I think most of the players from Eastern Europe are just a little more hungry than players from other countries,” she said. “They are a little hungrier. They’re probably pushing themselves a lot more…It was one of the ways to get out and see the world.”
It’s been nearly a decade and a half since the Bollettieri-based baseliner turned pro at the age of 14. That’s a lifetime in tennis years, but Kournikova says it sometimes feels as if it were yesterday:
“When I look at the pictures it does seem like a long time ago, but at the same time I remember so many moments,” she reflected. “I remember the hard work, the fun work. I remember Nick being mad, Nick being happy, Nick taking us on jet skis and having fun. But he was also very disciplined. He really instilled the discipline in us. It does feel like a lifetime away, but there are certain moments I remember completely clearly. I love looking back at it now. I couldn’t have had a better childhood, honestly. I’m lucky that I had that. Not that it was super easy. It was a lot of hard work, being away from home and being so young. But I wouldn’t have it any other way. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”
