Alisa Kleybanova

Infobox Tennis player
playername = Alisa Kleybanova


nickname(s) =
country = RUS
residence = Moscow, Russia
datebirth = birth date and age|1989|7|15
placebirth = Moscow, Soviet Union
height = height|m=1.81
weight = convert|72|kg|lb|abbr=on
turnedpro = 2003
plays = Right-handed; two-handed backhand
careerprizemoney = US$250,725
singlesrecord = 139–53
singlestitles = 0 WTA, 8 ITF
highestsinglesranking = No. 34 (July 21, 2008)
AustralianOpenresult = 2nd round (2008)
FrenchOpenresult = 2nd round (2008)
Wimbledonresult = 4th round (2008)
USOpenresult = 2nd round (2008)
doublesrecord = 66–26
doublestitles = 0 WTA, 11 ITF
highestdoublesranking = No. 69 (July 21, 2008)
updated = 30 June2008

Alisa Mikhaelovna Kleybanova (Russian: Алиса Михаиловна Клейбанова, born 15 July1989) is a Russian professional tennis player. Her highest WTA world ranking to date is number 34, achieved on 21 July2008. She has an odd style of hitting the backhand while her head is bent downwards and eyes looking at the ground. Critics agree that her weight problem and her habit of taking her eyes off the ball are two reasons why she's not able to play to her full potential.

Career

Kleybanova made her senior tennis début in 2003 aged just fourteen, and won the very first ITF tournament she entered.

To date her career-best achievements have been reaching the fourth round of one Grand Slam (The Championships, Wimbledon, 2008) as a direct entrant, and two WTA Tour Tier II quarter-finals (Antwerp, 2008; Eastbourne, 2008) as a qualifier. Additionally, she has reached one Tier I third round (Miami, 2008) as a qualifier, and one Tier IV quarter-final (Fes, 2008) as a direct entrant. At other WTA Tour events, she has yet to progress beyond the second round of the main draw; but her WTA career is still young, and she has battled successfully through qualifying to enter one Grand Slam and several further WTA main draws aside from her five notable main draw successes described above.

At the higher levels of the ITF circuit, she has reached one $100,000 quarter-final, two $75,000 quarter-finals, one $50,000 final and one $50,000 semi-final. In addition, at the lower levels, she has won seven $25,000 titles and one $10,000 title outright, and has reached two further $25,000 finals and another three $25,000 semifinals.

She has also experienced success in the juniors; she won the 2003 Wimbledon Championships girl's doubles with Sania Mirza, aged 13. Three years later, she won the same competition with fellow rising Russian star Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova. She also won the girl's doubles at the 2005 U.S. Open with Czech Nikola Franková.

2003-2004

In August 2003, aged just fourteen years and one month, Kleybanova entered qualifying for her first ITF $10,000 event at Mollerusa, Spain, and came through all three qualifying rounds into the main draw without dropping a set, then proceeded to progress through to the final and win the title at her very first attempt, having ceded just one set in the whole tournament in her second-round match.

In the two weeks following she was awarded special entry into the main draws of two further $10,000 tournaments held in Spain, at Madrid and Lleida, and reached the final of the first and the quarter-final of the second.

These three tournaments were the only ones she played all year, but her results were sufficient to place her on the ranking computer at World No. 623 by the year's end.

She next played at Tampa, Florida in January 2004, where for the second time in her short career she came through three straight rounds of qualifying without dropping a set; and in the main event she reached the quarter-finals before losing to World No. 223 American Kelly McCain 1–6 3–6.

Audaciously wildcarded into the main draw of a Tier I WTA event at Indian Wells in March, an extreme upward move from the $10,000 ITF tournaments to which she had hitherto been confined, she defeated World No. 58 Jelena Kostanic of Croatia in three sets in the first round, 2–6 6–0 7–5, but lost to Israeli World No. 19 Anna Smashnova in the second, 4–6 0–6.

In April, awarded discretionary junior entry into the main draw of her first $25,000 ITF fixture at Jackson, Massachusetts, she won through to the final, defeating Chinese World No. 155 Peng Shuai 6–4 7–5 in the quarter-finals, but then lost at the last hurdle to her ascending Russian compatriot, then World No. 201 Evgenia Linetskaya, 6–4 2–6 4–6.

Kleybanova was propelled upwards to World No. 316 following these performances although she had still only played six tournaments on the tour in her career. However, despite this early promise, she did not win another match in four further tournaments entered that year, losing on two straight tiebreaks in the first round of qualifying for the Tier V event at Budapest, Hungary in late April to Spaniard Paula Garcia, returning in September for a $50,000 contest at Biella, Italy where she was awarded junior entry into the first round of the main draw but lost to a little-known Austrian, and subsequently losing in the first rounds of two $25,000 tournaments held at Oporto, Portugal the following week and then in November at Raanana, Israel, where she was beaten 1–6 4–6 by emerging Israeli talent World No. 193 Shahar Peer.

Having failed to defend her ranking points picked up in the tournaments she played in the latter half of 2003, she found her ranking sliding to World No. 364 by the end of 2004.

2005

In March, the Russian teenager was favoured with a wildcard into the main draw at Indian Wells for the second year running, but this time she lost in the first round to World No. 95 Anne Kremer of Luxembourg, 4–6 4–6.

Her ranking having plunged to 520th following her failure to defend her points picked up at Indian Wells a year earlier, she was wildcarded into the qualifying draw instead of the main draw for the Tier I event at Miami, Florida that immediately followed, and at first defeated World No. 91 Séverine Beltrame (nowadays known as Séverine Brémond), but then lost in the second round of qualifying to German Julia Schruff, 1–6 3–6.

By the time she next competed in July, she had lost nearly all her ranking points and plummeted to World No. 730. This was sufficient to gain her entry to the qualifying draw for a $25,000 tournament held at Felixstowe, Great Britain; and she successfully came through qualifying, but lost in the second round of the main draw to World No. 228 Jarmila Gajdosova of Slovakia.

In August, ranked 618th, she entered qualifying for two successive $25,000 events in China - the first at Wuxi, where she qualified but lost in the second round of the main draw to World No. 325 Miho Saeki of Japan; and the second at Nanjing, where in the first round of qualifying she had to withdraw with the score level at one set all against a little-known Chinese player.

Travelling to Moscow at the end of the month, ranked 530th, she entered qualifying for a further $25,000 event there, and enjoyed not only by far her most successful performance of the year to date but also the best of her career, as she came through three rounds of qualifying and then won the entire tournament. Her vanquished opponents included Galyna Kosyk of the Ukraine, whom she defeated 4–6 7–5 6–0 in the second round of qualifying, Italians Giulia Gabba, Sara Errani and Karin Knapp, all of whom she defeated in straight sets, Margalita Chakhnashvili of Georgia, whom she beat 0–6 6–4 6–2 in the semi-finals, and fellow-Russian Vasilisa Bardina, whom she ousted in the final 6–2 6–2.

Wildcarded into the qualifying draw for the annual Tier I WTA fixture at Moscow in early October, her ranking having leapt back up to World No. 384, Kleybanova double-bagelled American former Top 40 star Alexandra Stevenson in the first round of qualifying, but then lost a close three-set match to Bulgarian World No. 41 Sesil Karatantcheva in the second, 6–1 1–6 3–6.

As a direct entrant to a $25,000 ITF event at Makinohara, Japan the following week, she battled past Japanese World No. 192 Seiko Okamoto 7–5 4–6 7–3 in the first round and World No. 349 Ayumi Morita 6–2 3–6 6–4 in the semi-finals, but otherwise did not drop a set in claiming her second career $25,000 title.

This result elevated her world ranking to a personal-best World No. 294 by the time of her entry into her next $25,000 draw at Sutama, Japan early in November. On this occasion, she won the whole tournament without losing a single set, defeating Japanese World No. 199 Shiho Hisamatsu 6–3 7–5 in the final to take her third $25,000 title and fourth career ITF tournament victory.

In December, now world-ranked 243rd, she tried her hand at qualifying for a $50,000 tournament at Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, but was defeated in three sets in the qualifying round by a lower-ranked player from Taipei. However, she entered the main draw as a lucky loser, and knocked out Japanese World No. 110 Saori Obata in the first round, 6–3 7–6(4), before losing to World No. 225 Tiffany Dabek of the USA in Round Two, 5–7 4–6.

The year ended for her with a win-loss record of 28-8 and a world ranking of 244th.

2006

The Russian sixteen-year-old began 2006 by attempting to qualify for the WTA Tier IV Pattaya Open, Thailand, but lost in the first round of the qualifying draw to American World No. 125 Bethanie Mattek.

Then in April, having skipped Indian Wells, she was awarded a wildcard into the main draw at Miami, but was defeated in the first round by French World No. 47 Virginie Razzano, 5–7 4–6.

In May, she retreated again to the ITF $25,000 level in Italy, playing back-to-back tournaments at Caserta and Campobasso. She reached the final in the first of these, recording four straight sets wins including victories over Sanja Ancic of Croatia in the quarter-finals and World No. 241 Alize Cornet of France in the semifinals. But at the last hurdle she lost to World No. 270 Mandy Minella of Luxembourg, 2–6 4–6. Then the following week at Campobasso, she gained her revenge over Minella by defeating her in the final 2–6 6–3 6–3 to pick up the fourth $25,000 title of her career, having earlier again put out Ancic in the semi-finals.

On the strength of these two tournaments, she entered the World Top 200 for the first time in her career.

In late July, world-ranked 198th, she attempted to qualify for the Tier IV WTA event at Budapest, Hungary, and for the first time in her career succeeded in qualifying for a WTA main draw, after defeating Spanish World No. 117 Maria Jose Martinez Sanchez in the qualifying round. But Spanish World No. 107 Laura Pous Tio defeated her 6–3 6–4 in the first round proper.

A month later, ranked 193rd, she attempted again to qualify for a $50,000 event at Bronx, New York, but was defeated in straight sets by a slightly lower-ranked opponent, Natalie Grandin, in the first round of the qualifying draw.

She followed up this disappointment by attempting to qualify for a Grand Slam main draw for the first time at the US Open at the end of August, and progressed to the qualifying round with wins over Thai World No. 115 Tamarine Tanasugarn (6–3 6–1) and Japan's World No. 224 Shiho Hisamatsu (5–7 6–3 6–3), then lost to German World No. 130 Sandra Kloesel, 3–6 3–6.

Returning to Moscow in early October, she tried again to qualify for the annual WTA Tier I event there, but this time lost in the second round of qualifying to her compatriot World No. 84 Vasilisa Bardina, 4–6 5–7.

She next played in early November, where as a direct entrant into the first round of a $75,000 ITF tournament at Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, she had reached 4–6 7–6 1–1 against American World No. 44 Shenay Perry before her opponent retired. But in the second round, she lost in straight sets to Canadian World No. 130 Stephanie Dubois, 5–7 4–6.

Her ranking having slipped to World No. 262 by the middle of the month following her failure to defend her $25,000 tournament victories a year previously, she nonetheless gained direct entry into a $50,000 event at Lawrenceville, Georgia, and easily surpassed her previous career-best record at this level of tournament by reaching the semi-finals with back-to-back straight sets victories over Americans World No. 129 Ahsha Rolle and World No. 104 Bethanie Mattek and Argentine World No. 115 Clarisa Fernandez. But it was to be an American star of the future, Julie Ditty, then ranked only 297th, who would oust her 6–1 6–2 in the semi-finals.

At the end of November, ranked 238th, Kleybanova entered another $50,000 draw at San Diego, California, and beat Ireland's Kelly Liggan 6–2 6–2 in the first round before losing to upcoming compatriot Ekaterina Afinogenova 3–6 3–6 in the second.

She did not play in December, and ended the year ranked World No. 262. Although this was down 18 places from the start of the year, the marginal loss was primarily a consequence of her choosing to focus on higher-level challenges at the expense of her previous year's points attained at $25,000 events; and the useful experience she had gained in the process would serve as an effective springboard into higher echelons of the WTA World rankings in future years. Her win-loss record for the year was 20-10.

2007

Starting the 2007 season relatively late at a $25,000 ITF event at Minsk, Belarus in early March, world-ranked 239th, Kleybanova could only reach the quarter-finals before losing in three sets to British World No. 222 Amanda Keen, 7–5 4–6 2–6, having had to struggle through two three-sets victories over lower-ranked players Lina Stanciute of Lithuania and fellow-Russian Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova to reach even that far.

At Moscow at the end of March, she entered another $25,000 tournament, and this time reached the semi-finals without dropping a set after her quarter-final opponent World No. 232 Nika Ozegovic of Croatia retired at 1–4 down to the Russian teenager. But in the semi-finals she was defeated by another young Russian, World No. 199 Evgeniya Rodina, 4–6 6–7(4).

In Moscow again two months later, she reached her second successive $25,000 semi-final, this time losing to a compatriot, World No. 224 Ekaterina Makarova 5–7 4–6.

By the middle of July, Kleybanova's WTA world-ranking had slipped to 273rd. Deciding nonetheless to continue at the $25,000 level into the early summer, she reached a quarter-final at Rome in mid-July before losing in straight sets to a lower-ranked Austrian called Patricia Mayr.

But the following week, still in Italy at Monteroni d'Arbia, she won her fifth career $25,000 title and first of the year, after defeating World No. 195 Darya Kustova of Belarus 2–6 6–2 6–4 in the semi-finals, and Estonian World No. 223 Margit Ruutel 6–1 7–5 in the final.

A week later, she decided to step up to the $75,000 level for the first time that year, and gained direct entry to an event of that calibre at Rimini, Italy. Having battled past both her first two opponents by the identical scoreline of 6–3 2–6 6–2, including Ukrainian World No. 174 Mariya Koryttseva in Round One, to reach her career-first $75,000 main draw quarter-final, she then found herself engaged in a very close battle with Swiss World No. 133 and former Top 100 player Emmanuelle Gagliardi, which the Russian eventually lost 6–7(6) 6–4 4–6.

Back in Moscow again in late August, buoyed by her recent successes to World No. 208, she reached another $25,000 semi-final, defeating Kristina Antoniychuk of the Ukraine 4–6 6–3 6–3 in the quarter-finals before losing to fellow-Russian upstart Anastasia Pivovarova 3–6 3–6.

In the next two weeks, she entered two further $50,000 tournaments. In the first, at Moscow, she lost a close three-set match in the first round 6–7(3) 7–6(4) 4–6 to compatriot Anastasia Poltoratskaya, whom she had easily beaten in the first round of the $25,000 touranment the previous week. Then at Mestre, Italy, she reached her career-first $50,000 final with back-to-back defeats of World No. 202 Jenifer Widjaja of Brazil (6–0 0–6 6–3), World No. 191 Ivana Lisjak of Croatia (6–4 6–0), and Czech players World No. 144 Barbora Zahlavova Strycova (6–2 6–2) and World No. 119 Renata Voracova (6–4 6–1). But she was denied the title by World No. 150 Rossana De Los Rios of Paraguay, who took the final 6–4 3–6 6–1.

This performance lifted Kleybanova to a ranking of 195th, just below her personal best set in the summer of 2006, in time for entering her first $100,000 ITF draw at Bordeaux, France the very week after. Here, she scored successive three-sets defeats over French World No. 86 Pauline Parmentier (6–7(2) 6–2 6–4) and Spanish former Top-100 star, now World No. 141, Laura Pous Tio, 2–6 6–0 6–4. But she lost in the quarter-finals to World No. 68 Alize Cornet of France, 5–7 4–6.

Playing her fifth straight tournament in five weeks at Lecce, Italy in the middle of September, world-ranked a career-best 184th, the young Russian captured the sixth $25,000 ITF title of her career. Having lost the first set of her first round tie against Czech player Andrea Hlavackova in Round One, she then reeled off ten straight sets for the loss of only seventeen more games to claim the tournament, beating formerly Top-50-ranked Spaniard Marta Marrero in the final 6–1 6–0.

Arriving back in Moscow for the annual WTA Tier I event held there in October, world-ranked 163rd, she was defeated in the first round of the qualifying draw by Ukrainian World No. 130 Tatiana Perebiynis.

A week later, she found herself back at Lawrenceville, Georgia for a $50,000 event, and knocked out American World No. 92 Ashley Harkleroad 7–6(4) 2–6 6–3 in the first round, but was defeated in the second by a much lower-ranked American wildcard Alexa Glatch, 6–7(5), 2–6.

In the last full week of October, still in Georgia, at Augusta, she virtually breezed through a $25,000 draw for the loss of just seventeen games, eight of them taken from her by just one of her five opponents, Argentine Clarisa Fernandez, in the quarter-finals. Notable among her squarely vanquished opponents was American World No. 244 Madison Brengle, whom she beat 6–0 6–2 in Round Two. It was the seventh $25,000 ITF title Kleybanova had won in her short career, and the third of that year.

Elevated to a new career-best world ranking of 153rd in time for her direct entry into a $75,000 draw at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in early November, the Russian scored victories over World No. 180 Sunitha Rao of India (6–2 6–1) and World No. 112 Aleksandra Wozniak of Canada (7–6(3) 1–6 6–2) to reach the quarter-finals, but then lost a topsy-turvy three-setter to her 92nd-ranked compatriot Olga Poutchkova, 6–0 1–6 4–6.

A week later at La Quinta, California, she reached the quarter-finals of a $50,000 ITF event, beating American World No. 151 Abigail Spears 7–6(4) 6–2 in Round Two beore losing to another American player, World No. 176 Raquel Kops-Jones, 4–6 1–6, in the quarter-finals.

Kleybanova did not play in December, but ended the year world-ranked down just a few places from her recently set career best at 156th, and with a strong 41-13 win-loss record to her credit. Although she had scored many of her main draw match wins at the ITF $25,000 level which she had already conquered several times back in 2005, she had also broken new ground at higher levels of competition in the second half of the year.

2008

Kleybanova began the 2008 season early by entering qualifying for the WTA Tier III tournament at Gold Coast, Australia in late December 2007. She qualified for the main draw of a WTA event for just the second time in her career so far, some seventeen months after reaching the Tier IV main draw at Budapest in July 2006. Her vanquished opponents were World No. 97 Tatiana Perebiynis, whom she defeated 7–5 6–2 in the first round of qualifying, World No. 121 Yuan Meng of China, whom she beat 6–3 5–7 6–2 in the second, and former Top-50 Chinese star Zheng Jie, whom she ousted 6–2 4–6 6–1 in the qualifying round. But in the first round of the main draw she faced Swiss World No. 16 Patty Schnyder, and lost to her 1–6 3–6.

In mid-January, she followed this up by entering qualifying for the Australian Open, and came through relatively comfortably to the first Grand Slam main draw of her still-young career with straight-sets wins over Canadian World No. 166 Marie-Eve Pelletier, Czech World No. 116 Iveta Benesova, and French World no. 136 Olivia Sanchez. In the first round of the main draw, she defeated Chinese World No. 45 Peng Shuai 7–5 4–6 9–7. But in Round Two she had to face World No. 6 Anna Chakvetadze, and lost to her 3–6 4–6.

Nonetheless, in reaching the second round of a Grand Slam as a qualifier, Kleybanova had earned 91 ranking points, sufficient to raise her World Ranking to a new personal best of 112th.

The next tournament for which she entered herself was another high-level WTA event, the Tier II fixture at Paris in early February. She won the first two rounds of qualifying, defeating her compatriot World No. 127 Galina Voskoboeva 6–4 6–4 in the first and a Belgian outsider in the second, but then lost to Czech World No. 70 Klara Zakopalova in the qualifying round. She emerged from this experience ranked just six places higher at World No. 106.

The following week, undeterred, she attempted to qualify for another Tier II WTA tournament at Antwerp, Belgium, and this time succeeded, after defeating World No. 206 Ekaterina Dzehalevich 6–3 7–6(4) in the second round of the qualifying draw, and Swedish World No. 67 Sofia Arvidsson 4–6 7–5 6–3 in the qualifying round. In the first round of the main draw, she stunned World No. 18 Agnes Szavay of Hungary 6–2 6-3; and in the second she edged out World No. 38 Kateryna Bondarenko of the Ukraine in an extremely close match, 7–5 3–6 7–5, to reach her career-first WTA-level quarter-final, where she met World No. 1 Justine Henin for the first time. Although the Russian teenager lost 4–6 3–6, she was assured of taking home enough ranking points from this event to reach into the World Top 100 for the first time in her career; and in practice she landed at World No. 82.

In late February she entered the qualifying draw for the Tier II event at Dubai and defeated World No. 60 Timea Bacsinszky of Switzerland 6-3 6-3 in the first round before losing a very close three-set battle in the second round of qualifying to rising World No. 123 Monica Niculescu of Romania despite winning more games than her opponent in the overall match, 6-7 6-2 5-7.

In early March, her ranking having slipped just a couple of places to No. 84, she entered qualifying for the Tier I tournament at Indian Wells, having failed by only one place to attain direct entry, but unexpectedly fell at the first hurdle in three sets to Japanese World No. 186 Rika Fujiwara, 6-3 1-6 5-7.

Towards the end of the month, she persevered in attempting to gain entry to events of Tier I calibre at Miami, and this time succeeded, scoring back-to-back comfortable straight-sets victories over Hungarian World No. 127 Greta Arn and resurgent former Top 50 star Mashona Washington of the USA, for the collective loss of just nine games in two matches. In the main draw, she defeated World No. 44 Olga Govortsova of Belarus (6-3 6-7(6) 6-2) then unexpectedly one-sidedly thrashed World No. 15 Nicole Vaidisova of the Czech Republic to reach the third round, where she lost to on-form World No. 20 Vera Zvonareva of Russia 1-6 4-6. The sixty-five ranking points accrued from this performance lifted her world ranking to a new career high of No. 70.

At Wimbledon in June, Kleybanova played in three events: Ladies' Singles, Ladies' Doubles (with Dominika Cibulkova of Slovakia, and Mixed Doubles (with Sonchat Ratiwatana of Thailand). In Ladies' Singles, she made it to the fourth round, her best career Grand Slam tournament result, losing 6-3, 6-4 to the reigning Wimbledon champion and number seven seed Venus Williams. On the way, she defeated unseeded Tzipora Obziler of Israel 6-4, 6-0 in the first round, beat number ten seed Daniela Hantuchova of Slovakia in the second round, and overcame unseeded Ai Sugiyama of Japan 6-4, 6-4 in the third round. She retired in the first round of Ladies' Doubles and lost in the first round of Mixed Doubles.

ingles performance timeline

External links

* [http://www.itftennis.com/womens/players/player.asp?player=100026774 ITF Profile]
*wta|id=311777