Anna Kournikova headed to NBC's

Anna Sergeyevna Kournikova (born 7 June 1981) is a Russian retired professional tennis player. Her beauty and celebrity status made her one of the best known tennis stars worldwide, despite the fact that she never won a WTA singles title. At the peak of her fame, fans looking for images of Anna Kournikova made her name one of the most common search strings on Google.

Anna Kournikova

Although reaching No. 8 in the world in 2000, she never won a WTA Title in singles. Kournikova's forte has been doubles, where she has at times been the World No. 1 player. With Martina Hingis as her partner, she won Grand Slam titles in Australia in 1999 and 2002. Based on their looks, Hingis and Kournikova referred to themselves as the "Spice Girls of Tennis". Kournikova's professional tennis career has been curtailed for the past several years, and possibly ended, by serious back and spinal problems. She resides in Miami Beach, Florida, and plays in occasional exhibitions and in doubles for the St. Louis Aces of World Team Tennis. She was a new trainer for season 12 of the television show The Biggest Loser, replacing Jillian Michaels, but will not return for season 13.

Early life
Anna Kournikova was born in Moscow, Soviet Union, on June 7, 1981. Her father, Sergei Kournikov, was 19 at the time. Sergei, a former Greco-Roman wrestling champion, had earned a Ph.D. and was a professor at the University of Physical Culture and Sport in Moscow. As of 2001, he was still a part-time martial arts instructor there. Her mother Alla, who was 18 when Anna Kournikova was born, had been a 400-meter runner.

Sergei Kournikov has said, "We were young and we liked the clean, physical life, so Anna was in a good environment for sport from the beginning." The family name is spelled in Russian without an "o", so a direct transliteration would be "Kurnikov", and it is sometimes written that way. But it is pronounced "Kournikov", so the family chose that as their English spelling. More information about Russian family names can be found here.

Anna Kournikova received her first tennis racquet as a New Year gift in 1986 at age 5. Describing her early regimen, she said, "I played two times a week from age six. It was a children's program. And it was just for fun; my parents didn't know I was going to play professionally, they just wanted me to do something because I had lots of energy. It was only when I started playing well at seven that I went to a professional academy. I would go to school, and then my parents would take me to the club, and I'd spend the rest of the day there just having fun with the kids." In 1986, Kournikova became a member of the Spartak Tennis Club, coached by Larissa Preobrazhenskaya. In 1989, at the age of eight, Anna Kournikova began appearing in junior tournaments, and by the following year, was attracting attention from tennis scouts across the world. Anna Kournikova signed a management deal at age ten and went to Bradenton, Florida, to train at Nick Bollettieri's celebrated tennis academy.

Playing style
As a player, Anna Kournikova was noted for her footspeed and aggressive baseline play, and excellent angles and dropshots; however, her relatively flat, high-risk groundstrokes tended to produce frequent errors, and her serve was sometimes unreliable in singles.

Anna Kournikova plays right-handed with a two-handed backhand. She is a great player at the net. She can hit forceful groundstrokes and also drop shots.

Her playing style fits the profile for a doubles player, and is complemented by her height. She has been compared to such doubles specialists as Pam Shriver and Peter Fleming.

Personal life
Kournikova was in a relationship with fellow Russian, Pavel Bure, an NHL ice hockey player. The two met in 1999 when Kournikova was still linked to Bure's former Russian teammate Sergei Fedorov. Bure and Kournikova were reported to have been engaged in 2000 after a reporter took a photo of them together in a Florida restaurant where Bure supposedly asked Kournikova to marry him. As the story made headlines in Russia, where they were both heavily followed in the media as celebrities, Bure and Kournikova both denied any engagement. Kournikova, 10 years younger than Bure, was 18 years old at the time. The following year, Kournikova and Fedorov were married in Moscow. They were soon divorced, however. Fedorov claimed he and tennis star Anna Kournikova were married in 2001, but later divorced in 2003. Kournikova's representatives deny any marriage to Fedorov; however, Sergei's agent Pat Brisson claims that although he does not know when they got married, he knew "he was married".

Kournikova started dating pop star Enrique Iglesias in late 2001 (she appeared in his video, "Escape"), and rumors that the couple had secretly married circulated in 2003 and again in 2005. Kournikova herself has consistently refused to directly confirm or deny the status of her personal relationships. But in May 2007, Enrique Iglesias was (mistakenly, as he would clarify later) quoted in the New York Sun that he had no intention of marrying Kournikova and settling down because they had split up. The singer would later deny these rumors of "divorce" or simply separation. In June 2008, Iglesias told the Daily Star that he had married Kournikova the previous year and that they are currently separated. In an interview with Graham Norton in 2010, Kournikova confirmed that she and Iglesias have been together for over eight years but have no plans to marry in the near future. Anna Kournikova and Iglesias have been a long term relationship for 10 years now.

Anna Kournikova has a younger brother, Allan. He became an American citizen in late 2009.
Kournikova resides in Miami Beach, Florida. She put her seven-bedroom, waterfront property in Bayshore on the market in May 2011.

Anna Kournikova

Media publicity
Most of Kournikova's fame has come from the publicity surrounding her looks and her personal life. During Kournikova's debut at the 1996 US Open at the age of 15, the world noticed her beauty, and soon pictures of her appeared in numerous magazines worldwide.

In 2000, Kournikova became the new face for Berlei's shock absorber sports bras, and appeared in the "only the ball should bounce" billboard campaign. Photographs of her scantily-clad form have appeared in various men's magazines, including one in the much-publicized 2004 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, where she posed in bikinis and swimsuits, and in other men's publications such as FHM and Maxim. Kournikova was named one of People's 50 Most Beautiful People in 1998 and was voted "hottest female athlete" on ESPN.com. In 2002 she also placed first in FHM's 100 Sexiest Women in the World in US and UK editions. By contrast, ESPN—citing the degree of hype as compared to actual accomplishments as a singles player—ranked Kournikova 18th in its "25 Biggest Sports Flops of the Past 25 Years". Kournikova was also ranked #1 in the ESPN Classic series "Who's number 1?" when the series featured sport's most overrated athletes.

She continued to be the most searched athlete on the Internet through 2008 even though she had retired from the professional tennis circuit years earlier. After slipping from first to sixth among athletes in 2009, she moved back up to third place among athletes in terms of search popularity in 2010.

In October 2010, Anna Kournikova headed to NBC's The Biggest Loser where she led the contestants in a tennis-workout challenge. In May 2011, it was announced that Kournikova would join The Biggest Loser as a regular celebrity trainer in season 12. She will not be returning for season 13. In November 2010, she became an American citizen.