Anna Kournikova: The world’s most famous tennis player who never won a Grand Slam
Anna Kournikova is an interesting sports star; she was a much-hyped tennis player when she started playing but later became known simply for her good looks and celebrity status. She was a very intelligent athlete; she knew how to get the crowd onto her side with her charm and looks and did not let her lack of success on the tennis court affect her fame and fortune. She has been incredibly media savvy throughout her career and knows how to keep herself in the limelight. That is where the strangeness of this former athlete comes in. The debate has been raging for years whether she is simply a good looking woman relying on her looks to get by in life or if she was actually a benefit to the sport of tennis.
Kournikova first burst onto the tennis scene as a 15-year old prodigy in 1996. The next year, she started to gain more of a following with people noticing how good looking she was. At the start of her career, she raked up several wins, causing major upsets and defeating some good tennis players at the time. In the summer of 1997, she started to play the best tennis of her career and she reached the semi-final stage of Wimbledon that year. She was something of an anomaly at that point in the tennis world; she was a tall, very good looking, s**y tennis player, the likes of which the world had never seen before. She instantly developed a male fan-base who had never even thought about watching tennis before she arrived. As time went by, her fame only increased; she won massive endorsement deals and starred in ads, music videos and even films. It seemed as if everyone wanted a piece of the beautiful Russian. Then people started to notice something else: she was not winning any major Grand Slams.
It was around the year 1999 that Kournikova peaked: she was at the top of her game and she eventually managed to make it to number 8 in the world. But then it was all downhill for her tennis career. She lost a key match against the rising star at the time, Venus Williams, at Wimbledon in 1999. It was at that point when a lot of fans, commentators and other players started to question her playing abilities. She was previously heralded to become the next big thing in tennis and set the world on fire, but it did not really happen. She just kind of faded from the rankings and retired in 2003. She did have a few good moments playing doubles with Martina Hingis but even with these, did not really set the tennis world alight. Even though she was one of the most hyped-up tennis players in the world, she could not deliver and her tennis career ended without much happening.
Where the great Ms. Kournikova really did shine was to use her good looks and tiny tennis fame to propel her into superstardom. She started to appear in commercials, ads and basically made her face available to the public in any way she could. She appeared in numerous men’s magazines and even started dating the famous musician Enrique Iglesias. She could maybe sense that her time on the tennis court was over and she needed to capitalise on it as soon as she could and make a name for herself before it was too late. With the legions of fans she managed to attract with her looks, she has ensured that she will have a long list of endorsements ready for her long after her tennis days are forgotten.
The debate still rages on today; on the one side are those that say that Kournikova is nothing more than a good looking woman who simply used her looks to get what she wanted in this world and she was never very good at tennis. The other side of the debate says that she was a good player when she was in her prime and she was also a proficient doubles player. They say that she used her looks to bring a whole new audience to tennis: young men who would not have watched it before, and many have stuck around and become genuine fans of the sport.
It is ultimately up to tennis fans to make up their minds about Anna Kournikova; was she a blessing or a bane for the sport? Did she increase the profile of women’s tennis or did she just enhance the negative stereotypes surrounding women’s sports in general? Well, whatever she did or did not do, she made a lasting impression on the game and ensured her fame and fortune would continue for many years to come. For that alone, she should be given credit.
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