EARLY DAYS OF ANNA KOURNIKOVA
Sergei said: “We were young and we liked the clean, physical life, so Anna was in a good environment for sport from the beginning.”The family name is spelled in Russian without an “o”, so a direct translation would be “Kurnikova”, and it is sometimes written that way. But it is pronouced “Kournikova”, so the family chose that as their english spelling.
Anna Kournikova was 5 years old in 1986, when she received her first tennis racquet as a Christmas gift.
Anna Kournikova says “I played two times a week from age five. It was a children’s program. And it was just for fun; my parents didn’t know I was going to play professionally, they just wanted me to do something because I had lots of energy. It was only when I started playing well at seven that I went to a professional academy. I would go to school, and then my parents would take me to the club, and I’d spend the rest of the day there just having fun with the kids.”
Anna Kournikova played her first tennis at Moscow’s Soklniki Park and at age 7 joined the prestigious Spartak Tennis Club, associated with Russian pro Olga Morozova. Anna was coached at Spartak by Larissa Preobrazhenskaya, a well-known Russian teaching pro who had been the Soviet Union’s first Fed Cup coach in 1968. Larissa said: “In our first group of children, Anna was the one who didn’t give up at once. Some of the other girls ran and jumped better than she did, but little Anna couldn’t stay in second place. When I saw that, I offered to train her.” Anna recalled: “All the kids loved [Preobrazhenskaya], because her best quality was patience. She would feed us balls all day and supervise our playing. Really, she was like a second mother to us, and that made us feel very protected. Playing there at Spartak for nine hours a day, I saw more of her than I saw of my real mother.”
Recalling her childhood, Anna Kournikova said: “I had dolls, but I was never really into girly stuff. My favorite toys were my stuffed animals, although I didn’t give them enough of my time. I would just visit with them for maybe five minutes every morning, and then I was running off to find something more active to do. I had too much energy… Mostly, I just wanted to play tennis for eight hours a day, watch tennis videos, eat, and fall into bed, dead.”
Within a year, Anna Kournikova had won her first junior tournament, and soon drew the attention of professional tennis scouts.
In the fall of 1991, when Anna Kournikova was ten, editor of Tennis Week magazine Eugene L. Scott, saw Anna Kournikova play in the juniors of a tournament he had organized in Moscow. Scott told IMG [International Management Group] agent Paul Theofanous, about Anna Kournikova.
Theofanous said “I kind of laughed it off at first, but then I saw her hit at the 1991 Kremlin Cup, and I started hearing from too many other people that this was one extraordinary talent.” After Theofanous had phone discussions with Anna’s mother Alla, Anna Kournikova signed a contract with IMG.
