Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova

Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova’s career is an example of consistency and versatility. A phenomenon of both precocity and longevity, at the age of 15 she was one of the youngest world junior champions (in 2006), before becoming, in 2023, the first player to reach the milestone of 100 appearances in the final draw of a WTA 1,000 tournament. In the meantime, Pavlyuchenkova has won 12 titles on the WTA Tour, plus the first women’s edition of the UTS in 2020 and the Billie Jean King Cup in 2021. She has reached the quarter-finals of every Grand Slam, in singles and doubles, including the final of the 2021 French Open, perhaps the greatest feat of her career.

A member of the Mouratoglou Academy since 2006, she was personally coached by Patrick Mouratoglou between 2007 and 2009.

Junior career: World champion, three Grand Slam titles

The year she arrived at the Mouratoglou Academy, in 2006, Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova had an exceptional junior season, winning the Australian Open/US Open double over Caroline Wozniacki and Tamira Paszek, plus a final at Roland Garros, which she lost to Agnieszka Radwanska. At the end of the season, she was crowned world champion in the junior category, one of the youngest in history behind Gabriela Sabatini and Martina Hingis. In total, ‘Nastia’, who retained her title at the Australian Open in 2007, this time beating Madison Brengle, has won 13 ITF U18 titles, including three majors.

WTA career: a dazzling start

Pavlyuchenkova turned professional at the end of 2005, but really began to make her mark on the WTA Tour in 2008 after her junior career. She made lightning progress, reaching the top 50 in just a few months. Two years later, in 2010, she was in the top 20, having won her first title that year in Monterrey.
 

WTA honours list: 12 titles

By the end of the 2024 season, she had won 12 titles on the WTA main tour, including four in “her” tournament in Monterrey, on hard courts (2010, 2011, 2013, 2017) and two Premier tournaments in 2014, in Paris and Moscow, indoors. She also won in Istanbul (hard) in 2010, Oeiras (clay) in 2013, Linz (indoor) in 2015, Rabat (clay) in 2017, Hong Kong (hard) in 2017 and Strasbourg (clay) in 2018.

Although she has never been a top 10 player herself (11th at her best in 2021), she has beaten 38 players in this elite group, starting with Jelena Jankovic (then world no. 3) at Indian Wells in 2009. Six of those victories have come at Grand Slam tournaments: Vera Zvonareva (No.3) at the 2011 French Open, Francesca Schiavone (No.8) at the 2011 US Open, Svetlana Kuznetsova (No.10) at the 2017 Australian Open, Kiki Bertens (No.9) and Sloane Stephens (No.5) at the 2019 Australian Open, Karolina Pliskova (No.2) at the 2020 Australian Open and Aryna Sabalenka (No.4) at Roland Garros in 2021. Lastly, Pavlyuchenkova beat a current world No. 1 in Angelique Kerber in the final at Monterrey in 2017.

UTS: winner of the first women’s UTS

Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova is to date the only female winner of a UTS event. It was in August 2020, on the courts of the Mouratoglou Academy. With her pseudonym The Thunder, she dominated Ons Jabeur and then Alizé Cornet.

Widely praised for her cheerful and outgoing personality, Nastia, who is now fluent in French, has many passions in life, including fashion, music, dance and film. She has several tattoos, including a lightning bolt behind her left ear that helped earn her the nickname ‘The Thunder’ when she won UTS 2020. She has been immersed in the world of sport for as long as she can remember, her grandparents being international basketball players, her mother a swimmer and her father a very high-level celestial artist.