Magdalena Maleeva

Magdalena Maleeva
Country (sports)	Bulgaria
Residence	Sofia, Bulgaria
Height	1.68 m (5 ft 6 in)
Turned pro	April 1989
Retired	October 2005
Plays	Right-handed (two-handed backhand)
Prize money	$4,398,582
Singles
Career record	439–290
Career titles	10 WTA, 1 ITF
Highest ranking	No. 4 (January 29, 1996)
Grand Slam singles results
Australian Open	4R (1991, 1993–94, 2002)
French Open	4R (1993, 1996, 2003–04)
Wimbledon	4R (2001–02, 2004–05)
US Open	QF (1992)
Doubles
Career record	121–133
Career titles	5 WTA, 1 ITF
Highest ranking	No. 13 (February 2, 2004)

Magdalena Maleeva (Bulgarian: Магдалена Малеева) (born April 1, 1975) is a Bulgarian former tennis player. She played on the WTA tour competing in singles and doubles, from April 1989 to June 2007. Her best position in the WTA Tour was number 4 between January 29 to February 4, 1996.

Biography

Born in Sofia, Maleeva was the youngest of the three children of Yulia Berberyan and Georgi Maleev. Yulia, who came from a prominent Armenian family which found refuge in Bulgaria after the 1896 Armenian massacres in the Ottoman Empire, was one of the best Bulgarian tennis players in the 1960s.^[1] After she retired from professional tennis in the 1970s, Berberyan started on a coaching career. She trained all of her three daughters, Magdalena, Katerina and Manuela, each of whom eventually became WTA top six players.

In 1988 Maleeva became the youngest ever national tennis champion of Bulgaria, at the age of 13 years and four months. She turned professional in 1989, reaching the final of her first professional tournament at ITF/Bari-ITA. In her Grand Slam debut at the French Open in 1990, she passed the qualifications and reached the third round. In 1992 Maleeva snatched her first Tour event victory in San Marino. The following year she reached the fourth round at the Australian, the French and the US Open, as well as the third round of Wimbledon. That same year, she was the opponent of Monica Seles at a tournament in Hamburg, Germany when a deranged fan stabbed Seles in the back on the court. In 1995 Maleeva won a total of three tournaments – in Moscow, Chicago, Oakland, which allowed her to reach a career-high number 4 the WTA rank list in January 1996.

In June 1998 Maleeva underwent shoulder surgery, which forced her off the Tour for the next eleven months. She started competing again in May 1999 and reached Top Twenty again in 2001. In 2002 she won the prestigious Kremlin Cup in Moscow, defeating three Top Ten players on her way (Venus Williams, Amélie Mauresmo and Lindsay Davenport). In 2004 she married her long-standing boyfriend, Lubomir Nokov.

Maleeva won a career total of ten WTA Tour titles in singles and five in doubles. She is the recipient of the 1993 WTA Tour Most Improved Player Award and was nominated for the 1990 WTA Tour Most Impressive Newcomer Award. She participated at the Olympic Games in Barcelona, Atlanta and Athens.

Life after tennis

In October 2005, Maleeva retired from professional tennis after 16 seasons (years), and became the last of the Maleeva sisters to retire. She now lives in Sofia, Bulgaria. On 27 June 2007, Maleeva gave birth to her first child: a girl named Julia and on December 13, 2008 she gave birth to a second child - Marko. She has been very active with the environmental organization 'Gorichka.bg', which works to create public awareness about urgent environmental problems. Maleeva also has created 'Harmonica'Harmonica, a brand for organic foods, has a couple of organic food stores in Sofia under the brand 'Biomag' and is a partner at the Maleeva tennis club.

WTA titles

Singles

Legend
Grand Slam (0)
WTA Championships (0)
Tier I (2)
Tier II (2)
Tier III (3)
Tier IV & V (3)
ITF Titles (1)

No.	Date	Tournament	Surface	Opponent in the final	Score
1.	July 26, 1992	San Marino, San Marino	Clay	Federica Bonsignori	7–6(3), 6–4
2.	September 25, 1994	Moscow, Russia	Carpet (I)	Sandra Cecchini	7–5, 6–1
3.	October 9, 1994	Zürich, Switzerland	Carpet (I)	Natasha Zvereva	7–5, 3–6, 6–4
4.	February 12, 1995	Chicago, United States	Carpet (I)	Lisa Raymond	7–5, 7–6
5.	September 24, 1995	Moscow, Russia	Carpet (I)	Elena Makarova	6–4, 6–2
6.	November 5, 1995	Oakland, United States	Carpet (I)	Ai Sugiyama	6–3, 6–4
7.	November 21, 1999	Pattaya City, Thailand	Hard	Anne Kremer	4–6, 6–1, 6–2
8.	December 5, 1999	Cergy-Pontoise, France	Hard (I)	Seda Noorlander	6–1, 6–4
9.	April 22, 2001	Budapest, Hungary	Clay	Anne Kremer	3–6, 6–2, 6–4
10.	October 6, 2002	Moscow, Russia	Carpet (I)	Lindsay Davenport	5–7, 6–3, 7–6
11.	June 15, 2003	Birmingham, United Kingdom	Grass	Shinobu Asagoe	6–1, 6–4

Doubles

2005 - Gold Coast (with Elena Likhovtseva)
2003 - Miami (with Liezel Huber); Warsaw (with Huber)
2002 - Antwerp (with Patty Schnyder)
1991 - Bol (with Laura Golarsa).

Record against other top players

As of November 2, 2010 Maleeva's win-loss record against certain players who have been ranked World No. 10 or higher is as follows:^[2] Players who have been ranked World No. 1 are in boldface.