The Overlooked Career of Anna Chakvetadze

Talent can only take someone so far, to succeed you have to work for it. Anna Chakvetadze was not the strongest, tallest or fastest player growing up in Moscow, Russia. She did not have the greatest success in the junior tennis circuit having reached a high of #22 in 2003. Anna did have one memorable mark in the juniors having made the finals of Wimbledon.

After a few years of struggling to make her mark at the professional level, Anna adjusted to the professional life and game in 2006. She capped the year off with titles in Moscow and Guangzhou (China). To keep herself grounded and maintain her strong family ties, she spends a lot of time with her family.

The proximity of Anna’s family during her ascent on the WTA tour has always been beneficial to her. Additionally, Chakvetadze embraced her beauty by posing for various model shoots and magazine spreads. She’s also a big fan of sports cars.

Anna is not afraid of her beauty and as you can tell by the pictures; her personality is front and center. She likes sports cars, the faster the better and has her own collection to prove it Anna was on top of the world during the tennis season in 2007. Her return of serve was considered among the best in the game. Her ability to switch from defense to offense helped her elevate her game to #5 in the world. She reached the semifinals of the US Open and the Year Ending Championships. In all she had wins over both Williams sisters and Jelena Jankovic to go with 4 more titles in her collection.

A horrible event occurred just a few short months later, right when it looked like things couldn’t get much better for Chakvetadze. During the off-season in December 2007, Chakvetadze was at her home in Russia, which was intruded upon by burglars. They tied her up and threatened her with a gun, severely beat her father, and stole over $300,000 in jewelry and other things from Chakvetadze’s house. Needless to say, she was very shaken up.

2008 was a struggle to say the least. Anna tried focusing on tennis and living life, but the nerves of steel that brought her to #5 quickly dissipated. Many tennis fans go out of their way to show support to Anna and try and lift her spirits and belief, which has not gone unnoticed by Chakvetadze.

In 2009, Chakvetadze is still fighting as hard as she can to restore her spirit and bring herself back to her previous state. While this will be a difficult task to say the least, the New York crowd at the US Open is well aware of her struggles, and will be behind her in its desire to see her return to her 2007 form.

No matter how she does from here, all she can do is fight. Having been a fighter all of her life, there’s no doubt that she’ll continue to do so.