Maria KirilenkoSports Station

Maria Yuryevna Kirilenko (Russian: Мари́я Ю́рьевна Кириле́нко; born in Moscow on 25 January 1987) is a Russian professional tennis player. Kirilenko won her first WTA Tour title in 2005, defeating Anna-Lena Grönefeld in the China Open. Kirilenko reached 18, her career-high singles ranking, on the WTA tour in July 2008. She won the junior event at the 2002 Canadian Open, as well as the 2002 US Open junior tournament. She has reached one Grand Slam quarterfinal at the 2010 Australian Open. As of 8 November 2010, Kirilenko is ranked World No. 20.

Maria Kirilenko Images

Maria Kirilenko Tennis Gallery

Personal life

Born in the Soviet Union of paternal Ukrainian heritage, Kirilenko is a good friend of fellow WTA players Maria Sharapova, Ana Ivanović, Agnieszka Radwańska, and Marta Domachowska. Kirilenko is affectionately called Makiri. She is in a relationship with tennis player Igor Andreev.

Tennis career

Junior career

Maria Kirilenko started showing a passion towards tennis at age 5, but it was difficult to get the practice in while she was attending school. Her father enrolled her in a tennis school, and 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 to work together with her. 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.