Maria Kirilenko

Maria Kirilenko 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 several tournaments.

When Kirilenko was twelve years old, an Honored Master of sports, Elena Brioukhovets, saw her while training. All the next year Elena watched Maria making progress and then offered her to work together. A three-year program was made and a special team was selected. In less than three years Maria became the number one in her age group and the number two in the group under eighteen. The well-known tennis-players Yevgeni Kafelnikov, Andrei Olhovskiy and Max Mirnyi, who had created an organization supporting young tennis-players, helped Kirilenko to arrange her training-process and to attend tournaments.

In 2002 Kirilenko became one of the youngest winners of the Canadian Open and the US Open Junior Tournaments.
Since September 2002 Kirilenko 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 experience. At the end of 2005 she had climbed right up the rankings and won her first title in Beijing. She has been recognized as one of the up and coming players of 2006 and, despite being off her best form during the Summer, she has broken into the top 20 for the first time on June 12th, 2006.

Kirilenko made her debut for Russia at the nation-based Fed Cup tournament on 22/23 April 2006 on the World Group Quarter-Final tie against Belgium. Maria lost a singles rubber against '05 US Open champion Kim Clijsters and won her doubles rubber against multiple major champion Justine Henin-Hardenne and the same Kim Clijsters partnering Dinara Safina. Russia ended up losing 3-2.
At the 2006 US Open, Kirilenko received the 20th seed of the tournament and reached the 3rd Round, eventually being defeated by Aravane Rezai.

In January 2007, she advanced to the third round of the 2007 Australian Open, before being defeated by third-seed Svetlana Kuznetsova, immediately after which she competed in the 2007 Toray Pan Pacific Open in Tokyo, where she advanced to the second round upsetting #15 Shahar Peer of Israel, before being defeated by Ai Sugiyama. She then competed in the Dubai Tennis Championships in Dubai, where she reached the second round, before losing in a close match to Daniela Hantuchova 6-2 4-6 6-7 (4/7).

After the U.S. Open, she appeared in the Sunfeast Open. There, Kirilenko won her second WTA Tour singles title, defeating unseeded Mariya Koryttseva of the Ukraine in straight sets 6-0,6-2. En route to the finals, she had beaten some very in form players namely Daniela Hantuchova, Flavia Pennetta, up and coming Ekaterina Ivanova and Indian qualifier Neha Uberoi. This win will propel her back into the top 30 with a chance of going higher.

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