Anisimova, 15, ready for her Grand Slam debut
On the eve of Amanda Anisimova’s latest trip to the French Open, she was ripping forehands and two-handed backhands in the sunshine on a public clay court in South Florida.
Tall and deeply tan with a long braided ponytail, Anisimova is just 15, the child of Russian parents who have nurtured her precocious talent. It sounds like the start of a familiar tennis tale. See Maria Sharapova and Anna Kournikova, two blond Russian prodigies who arrived very young in the academy-rich ecosystem of South Florida and, against the odds, went on to fame and fortune.
But this familiar story has a twist. Anisimova is an American, born in Freehold Township, New Jersey, on Aug. 31, 2001. She represents the United States and reached the French Open junior final last year. Though she speaks Russian with her parents, Konstantin and Olga, she has never been to Russia.
“I never considered representing Russia,” Anisimova said in an interview on Sunday at the apartment complex where she and her parents live. “I do plan on going, though. I really want to visit and see what it’s like and see the culture more.”
First, though, she has a major tennis commitment: her first appearance in the main draw of a Grand Slam tournament. She is the youngest player in the top 300 at No. 262, and she will be the youngest to play singles in the French Open since 2005, when Alizé Cornet of France received a wild card at 15.
Like Cornet, Anisimova also has a wild card, a reciprocal one offered to the U.S. Tennis Association by the French Tennis Federation. But she was not simply handed her spot in the draw. She had to compete against her American elders in a series of claycourt events this spring. She secured the wild card by reaching the finals of back-to-back tournaments last month in Indian Harbour Beach, Florida, and Dothan, Alabama.
She headed to Paris on Monday with quite an entourage for a 15-year-old: her mother, Olga; her fitness trainer, Andy Hanley; her new coach, Henner Nehles; a hitting partner, Maxsim Fomine; and her agent, Gary Swain, the IMG veteran who has long worked with John McEnroe.