Alizé Cornet

Best WTA ranking 11

Country France
Age 34 years
Size 1.73 m
Jeu Right-handed, two-handed backhand

Special feature: Holder of the women's record for consecutive appearances at a Grand Slam tournament (69)

Profile & career

Retired since Roland-Garros 2024, Alizé Cornet will remain one of the leading figures in French women’s tennis in the first quarter of the 21st century, thanks to her record of achievements, her longevity and the sparkling personality that made her such a great competitor. A quarter-finalist at the Australian Open 2022 at the end of her career, the French player, who has also embarked on a career as a writer, is originally from Nice and has always prepared her seasons on the courts of the Mouratoglou Academy.

Cornet discovered tennis at the age of four at the Tennis Club des Arènes de Cimiez in Nice with her brother Sébastien, and has never stopped playing since. Throughout a professional career that spanned twenty years, between 2004 and 2024, she won six titles on the main WTA circuit, plus the Fed Cup (now the Billie Jean Cup) in 2019. The French No.1 and world No.11 at her best, she reached the second week of every Grand Slam and also holds the record for consecutive Grand Slam appearances (69).

Patrick Mouratoglou describes Alizé Cornet as a hard worker, which has sometimes played into her hands. “She trains very hard, sometimes even beyond her limits. She’s very competitive but that can sometimes backfire. When things don’t go her way, she quickly gets frustrated and that has cost her a lot of matches. At the end of her career, she was much more relaxed and tolerant with herself and that was great to see.”

CORNET'S PRIZE LIST

Junior career: Graal at Roland-Garros

Brilliant and precocious in everything she undertook, Alizé Cornet quickly distinguished herself at youth level, becoming French champion in the 13-14 age group in 2004, then European champion in the 15-16 age group in 2005. On the ITF junior circuit, played in parallel with her professional debut, she won three titles, including the French Open in 2007, her last tournament in the category.

WTA career: precociousness… and longevity

Here again, her precociousness has been matched only by her longevity. The love affair between Alizé Cornet and the French public began in 2005 at Roland-Garros, where, in her first tournament on the main circuit at the age of 15 (on the strength of an invitation), she won a match before going on to challenge one of her idols, Amélie Mauresmo, in the 2nd round, a poster of whom adorned the walls of her childhood bedroom.

But it was really in 2008, perhaps the best season of her career, that she established herself for good among the world’s tennis elite, a place she would never leave for the rest of her career. In the meantime, she has enjoyed a great deal of success and excitement…

WTA TITLES: 6 titles, 9 finals and unforgettable victories

Alizé Cornet has won six titles on the WTA Tour, the first in Budapest in 2008 and the last ten years later in Gstaad, in 2018. She has won two other tournaments on clay in Bad Gastein (2012) and Strasbourg (2013), one on indoor hard court in Katowice (2014) and one on outdoor hard court in Hobart (2016).

La Niçoise has also reached nine finals, including the Premiership tournaments in Rome in 2008 and Dubai in 2014, where she was beaten by Jelena Jankovic and Venus Williams respectively. And let’s not forget her Fed Cup victory with the French team in 2019, even though she didn’t play in the final in Australia.

Over the course of these superb results, Alizé has forged a reputation as a head-cutter that is justified, to say the least: she has 25 wins over players in the top 10, including four over a current world No. 1: Serena Williams on three occasions, plus Iga Swiatek, then world No. 1 at Wimbledon in 2022. Her victory over Serena in the 3rd round of Wimbledon in 2014 is undoubtedly the most memorable of her career.

CORNET &
THE GRAND SLAMS

More than ever, the Grand Slam tournaments will remain the symbol of the density of Alizé Cornet’s career. She has played a total of 72 tournaments, including 69 in a row between the 2007 Australian Open and Roland Garros 2024, beating the women’s all-time record previously held by Japan’s Ai Sugiyama. She has also reached the second week of every major tournament.

Quarter-finalists in 2022
8th finalist in 2015 and 2017
8th finalist in 2014 and 2022
8th finalist in 2020

Statistics & records

16 consecutive years in the TOP 100
69 consecutive Grand Slam appearances
3 wins over Serena Williams (only French player)

Its link with
the Mouratoglou Academy

She’s known the site all her life: keen to stay in her region, Alizé turned down all offers to join the Pôle France when she was young, and instead had the southern branch of the former Team Lagardère, which opened in Sophia-Antipolis in 2005.

A regular visitor, the woman from Nice has remained loyal to the academy where, for the record, her partner was coach for two years. Patrick Mouratoglou, to whom she is close, has often praised her incredible capacity for hard work: “She goes beyond her limits and can even faint during training”, he revealed in an interview. In particular, Alizé liked to ask for male training partners in order to guarantee an extraordinary session intensity.

At the end of her career, she was coached part-time by Nicolas Beuque, a graduate of the Mouratoglou Academy, who was her coach at Wimbledon 2022, where she reached the second week by dominating Iga Swiatek.

HIS GAME

Alizé Cornet may never have been the tallest or the strongest, but she has managed to carve out a place in the sun thanks to a phenomenal sense of the game and an innate competitive instinct, while at the same time cultivating great athletic qualities, particularly in terms of endurance and explosiveness.

Her varied, somewhat ‘hybrid’ tennis, with a fairly lifted forehand – she has developed it a great deal technically over the course of her career – and a straighter backhand, has enabled her to adapt to all surfaces, despite an initial fondness for clay. Above all, her extraordinary fighting spirit and sometimes volcanic character have always made her spectacular to watch, whatever the circumstances. With Alizé, there’s never been a dull moment!

Personal Life
& Interests

A bit of a jack-of-all-trades, Alizé Cornet did a lot of things before tennis, including making a name for herself as the heroine of an episode of the TV series L’Instit (in 2000), before passing her baccalaureate two years early.

Her life after tennis promises to be just as rich, as she has embarked on a career as a novelist: after a first autobiographical work (Sans compromis, published by Amphora), she published her first two novels in 2022 (La Valse des Jours, Flammarion) then in 2024 (Ce qui manque à l’Amour, Albin-Michel). She is currently writing the next one, while France Télévisions has already asked her to become a consultant at Roland-Garros. She has already taken her first steps on Be In Sport.