Maria Kirilenko Profile
Name - Maria Kirilenko
Country - Russia
Residence - Moscow, Russia
Date of birth - January 25, 1987 (1987-01-25) (age 21)
Place of birth - Moscow, Soviet Union
Height - 1.73 m (5 ft 8 in)
Weight - 57.6 kg (127 lb/9.07 st)
Turned Pro - 2001
Retired - Active
Plays - Right
Career Prize Money - $1,442,590
Singles
Career record - 167-115
Career titles - 2 (3 ITF Circuit titles)
Highest ranking - No. 20 (June 12, 2006)
Grand Slam results
Australian Open - 4r (2008)
French Open - 3r (2006)
Wimbledon - 2r (2005)
US Open - 3r (2003, 2006, 2007)
Doubles
Career record - 82-71
Career titles - 3
Highest ranking - No. 21 (February 6, 2006)
Maria Kirilenko Biography
Maria Yuryevna Kirilenko (Russian: Мари́я Ю́рьевна Кириле́нко; born January 25, 1987) is a Russian professional tennis player. Born in Moscow, she won her first WTA Tour title in 2005, defeating Anna-Lena Groenefeld 6–3, 6–4 in the China Open. Kirilenko reached #20, her career-high singles ranking, on the WTA tour in June 2006. She is a good friend of Maria Sharapova. She is affectionately called Makiri.
Maria Kirilenko won the junior event at the 2002 Canadian Open, as well as the 2002 US Open junior tournament. In December 2004 she played in a tennis exhibition in Tampa, Florida to raise money for the Florida Hurricane Relief Fund.
In 2006, she was selected to be the face of Adidas by Stella McCartney tennis range, designed by noted British fashion designer Stella McCartney. Since the 2006 Australian Open, Kirilenko has played in adidas clothing and footwear designed by Stella McCartney at all upcoming tournaments.
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.
Since September 2002 Kirilenko started participating in WTA events. She made a lot of progress in WTA events but was setback by injury in 2004 and dropped down the rankings, whilst missing out on valuable experience. At the end of 2005 she had climbed right up the rankings and won her first title in Beijing. She has been recognized as one of the up and coming players of 2006 and, despite being off her best form during the Summer, she has broken into the top 20 for the first time on June 12th, 2006.
Kirilenko made her debut for Russia at the nation-based Fed Cup tournament on 22/23 April 2006 on the World Group Quarter-Final tie against Belgium. Maria lost a singles rubber against '05 US Open champion Kim Clijsters and won her doubles rubber against multiple major champion Justine Henin-Hardenne and the same Kim Clijsters partnering Dinara Safina. Russia ended up losing 3–2.
At the 2006 US Open, Kirilenko received the 20th seed of the tournament and reached the 3rd Round, eventually being defeated by Aravane Rezai.
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