Anna Sergeyevna 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 "Kurnikov", and it is sometimes written that way. But it is "Kournikov", so the family chose that as their English spelling.
Anna received her first tennis racquet as a New Year gift in 1986 at age 5. Anna 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." In 1986, Anna became a member of the prestigious Spartak Tennis Club, coached by Larissa Preobrazhenskaya. In 1989, at the age of eight, Anna began appearing in junior tournaments, and by the following year, was attracting attention from tennis scouts across the world. Anna signed a management deal at age ten and went to Bradenton, Florida to train at Nick Bollettieri's celebrated tennis academy.
Tennis career