Category: Hall of Fame

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…

Childhood Cori “Coco” Gauff was born March 13, 2004, in Atlanta, Georgia, and raised in Delray Beach, Florida — the eldest of three kids. Both her parents were elite athletes: her father, Corey Gauff, played college basketball at Georgia State; her mother, Candi, ran track at Florida State. Tennis wasn’t the family sport. Coco picked…

Childhood Chris Evert was born Christine Marie Evert on December 21, 1954, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida — the second of five kids in a family where tennis was the family business. Her father, Jimmy Evert, was the teaching pro at Holiday Park, a public tennis facility, and her mother Colette played too. All five kids…

Childhood Carlos Alcaraz was born May 5, 2003, in El Palmar, a modest town in Spain’s Murcia region. He’s the second of four boys. His father, Carlos Alcaraz González, was a talented player in his youth and later became tennis director of the Real Sociedad Club de Campo de Murcia — a club built by…

Here’s a thought that should comfort every parent watching their kid hit a “wrong-looking” shot: one of the most famous strokes in tennis history exists because a 9-year-old wasn’t strong enough to swing his racquet. Björn Borg’s two-handed backhand — the shot that helped him win 11 Grand Slams — was born from a wooden…

Every other story in this series is about pushing through. Ash Barty’s is about stopping. At 18, ranked in the top 100 and coming off three Grand Slam doubles finals, she quit tennis, took up professional cricket, and spent nearly two years being a normal teenager. Then she came back — and became world No.…

Two brothers, a tiny homemade court inside the house, and one rule: you’re not allowed to hit the ball hard. That indoor game — the Murrays called it “touch tennis” — might be the most important training Andy Murray ever did. Both Murray brothers became world No. 1: Jamie in doubles, Andy in singles. They…

Your 7-year-old is at a weekend clinic hitting soft red balls off a feed. Andre Agassi, at 7, was in a Las Vegas backyard facing a homemade ball machine — nicknamed “The Dragon” — that his father rigged to fire 2,500 tennis balls an hour at up to 110 miles per hour. He faced it…