Is there a curse on first-time Grand Slam champions? – Last Part: Anastasia Myskina
There are a number of WTA (Women’s Tennis Association) players who have followed the similar trend of going through a slump in their form after winning a Grand Slam title. It actually appears as if there is really some kind of
a curse for women tennis players in winning a Major for the first time.
Former women’s world number two, Anastasia Myskina of Russia, also comes among those players who went for a dip after their Major title victory. Myskina was ranked at number seven in WTA World Rankings when she clinched the 2004
Roland Garros title to become the first women tennis player from Russia to win a Grand Slam championship.
The Russian lost in the quarter-final of the Australian Open in 2004 and bagged one title victory in Doha before entering the French Open as the world number five. Myskina rooted out Svetlana Kuznetsova, Venus Williams and Jennifer
Capriati to play the final of the Roland Garros against her fellow Russian opponent, Elena Dementieva. Myskina put up a brilliant display of high quality tennis to outplay her opponent in straight sets, 6-1, 6-2, to lift her first ever Grand Slam title.
Myskina eventually rose to number three in the WTA rankings, becoming the first Russian player ever to reach the Top-3. She then made it to the third round of Wimbledon, final in San Diego, semi-final in Montreal, semi-final in
the Olympics and the second round of the US Open after her Grand Slam win. She never went past the quarter-final round of any Grand Slam event ever after and has abandoned professional tennis since 2007.
Former world number two, Jana Novotna from Czech Republic, won her first Grand Slam tournament at Wimbledon in 1998. She took off the year as world number three and bagged a single title in Linz before reaching the Roland Garros.
She lasted till the quarter-final before losing to Monica Sales of the United States in three sets.
Novotna won a WTA title in Eastbourne immediately after her French Open defeat and entered the Wimbledon Championships as the third seed. She outplayed Tatiana Pironkova, Corina Morariu, Irina Spirlea, Venus Williams and Martina
Hingis to meet Nathalie Tauziat of France in the final. The Czech took down her opponent in straight sets, 6-4, 7-6(2), to claim the Wimbledon title for the first time in her career.
Novotna performed well subsequent to her Major victory and won championship title in Prague immediately afterwards. She made it to the semi-final in Montreal, final of New Haven and then the semi-finals of the US Open to finish
the year as world number three. The Czech retired from the professional tennis soon afterwards but her run in 1998 showed the similar suffering from the curse of winning a Major for the first time.
Another WTA player suffering from the same stigma was Croatia’s Iva Majoli, who won the French Open title in 1997 for the first time. She then followed up her Grand Slam victory by reaching the quarter-final of Wimbledon and had
8-10 winning record after the Grand Slam at the Flushing Meadows.
The most part of the recent history does not prop up the curse of the first-time Grand Slam winners, supporting the fact that tennis can be anyone’s game and is truly based on the individual. A little bit of luck and confidence
helps player to go a long way but only the consistent ones turn out to become Steffi Graf, Serena Williams and Maria Navratilova.
Tags: