ANNA KOURNIKOVA - AN YOUNG TENNIS TALENT!
By 1993, Anna Kournikova was winning titles in the “18s” tournaments, which is for girls 18 or younger, and the St. Petersburg Times referred to her as “the latest teen phenom”. Then Anna Kournikova was 11 years old.
In his book Topspin, Elliot Berry describes watching Anna playing in the US Open Juniors in 1994:
There were three junior girls I felt sure would make it as pros: Anna Kournikova, Venus Williams, and Martina Hingis. Their personalities were already distinct, and there was a fine line between the amusing arrogance of young Anna Kournikova and the quiet self-confidence of Martina Hingis. Venus Williams was still in tissue paper, waiting to be unwrapped by her sponsors…
I was particularly partial to little Anna Kournikova, who at age twelve was impossibly pleased with herself [Anna Kournikova was actually 13 years and almost 3 months old at this time]. Anna Kournikova played with all savvy, guts, and hauteur of a seasoned trouper…
That budding arrogance was part of what made a two-hour-ten-minute beauty out of the upcoming doubles match between Anna Kournikova and Nino Louarsabishvilym two Russians nearly a foot different in height, and the top American junior team of Cristina Moros and Stephanie Nickitas…
Kournikova’s grunts were louder than Monica Seles’s had been, and for whole games she was, incredibly at twelve [13] years old, the best player on the court. It looked for a while as if Moros and Nickitas, the two-time American junior champions who had lost 6-3, 6-3 to Jana Novotna and Aranxta Sanchez-Vicario in the main U.S. Open draw, would lose to the Mutt-and-Jeff Russian girls [Anna Kournikova and Nino eventually lost the match, played on September 6, 1994, 5-7, 6-4, 3-6].
At 1994’s year-end “18s” Rolex Orange Bowl International Tennis Championships in Miami Beach, Anna Kournikova, seeded 9th, lost in the final on Christmas Eve to Marian Ramon of Spain, 5-7, 4-6.
The following year, 1995, Anna Kournikova dominated junior tennis. She was a French Open juniors quarterfinalist, and a Wimbledon juniors semifinalist, and won the European Championships and Italian Open juniors. In the Christmas Eve Orange Bowl “18s” final, Anna defeated Sandra Nacuk of Yugoslavia 6-3, 6-2, and finished the year as the ITF Junior World Champion.
