Author: Steve Jones

Childhood Roger Federer was born August 8, 1981, in Basel, Switzerland, and grew up in nearby Münchenstein. Neither parent was a tennis insider — his father Robert was a pharmaceutical executive and his mother Lynette, a South African native, worked at the same company. Tennis was simply what the family did on weekends at the…

Childhood Rafael Nadal was born June 3, 1986, in Manacor, a small town on the Spanish island of Mallorca. His father Sebastián was a businessman; his mother Ana María ran the household. Sports ran deep in the family — one uncle, Miguel Ángel Nadal, was a professional footballer for Barcelona and Spain. The uncle who…

Childhood Pete Sampras was born August 12, 1971, in Potomac, Maryland — the third of four kids in a Greek-American family. His father Sam was an aerospace engineer; his mother Georgia was a homemaker. The family moved to Palos Verdes, California, when Pete was seven. He found a tennis racquet in the basement at age…

Childhood Novak Djokovic was born May 22, 1987, in Belgrade, Serbia (then Yugoslavia) — the eldest of three boys. His parents, Srđan and Dijana, ran a pizza restaurant and a sports equipment business. Nobody in the family played tennis. Novak started at four, at a tennis camp his parents sent him to during the summer…

Childhood Naomi Osaka was born October 16, 1997, in Chūō-ku, Osaka, Japan — to a Japanese mother, Tamaki Osaka, and a Haitian-American father, Leonard François. She has an older sister, Mari, also a tennis player. The family moved to New York when Naomi was three, then to Florida. She holds Japanese citizenship and has represented…

Childhood Monica Seles was born December 2, 1973, in Novi Sad, Yugoslavia (now Serbia) — the younger of two kids in an ethnic Hungarian family. Her father, Károly, was a cartoonist and a decent amateur player who strung his daughter’s first racquet… with two handles. The family story goes that he drew a cartoon character…

Childhood Martina Hingis was born September 30, 1980, in Košice, Czechoslovakia — named after Martina Navratilova. Her mother, Melanie Molitor, was a top Czech player; her father, Karol Hingis, was a tennis coach. She was on a court at two. Not metaphorically — at two years old, hitting balls. By four she was competing in…

Childhood Maria Sharapova was born April 19, 1987, in Nyagan, a Siberian oil town her parents had fled to after the Chernobyl disaster — and she started tennis at four in Sochi, on courts near the Black Sea. Her father Yuri was a construction worker, not a tennis insider. At six, she attended a Moscow…

Childhood Li Na was born February 26, 1982, in Wuhan, Hubei province, China — and she didn’t start as a tennis player. At six, her father, Li Shengpeng, put her into badminton. She was good at it. Then at eight, her coach decided her build suited tennis better and moved her to a different sport…

Childhood Iga Świątek was born May 31, 2001, in Warsaw, Poland — the younger of two daughters. Her father, Tomasz Świątek, was an Olympic rower who competed at the 1988 Seoul Olympics; her mother Dorota was an orthodontist. Tennis entered through her older sister Agata, who played seriously. Iga started tennis at around four or…