CAREER BEGINNINGS AND THE MOVE FROM MOSCOW TO PRAGUE
Ekaterina Alexandrova was born on November 15, 1994 in Chelyabinsk, a Siberian city of about 1.2 million inhabitants located to the East of the Urals, close to the border with Kazakhstan. In order to have more information, I visited Wikipedia: founded at the end of the 1700s around a military fortress, the city began to grow rapidly by the early 20th century as a result of the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway, and later on became a major industrial centre under the Soviet Union. Two more relevant events about the city need to be mentioned: a serious nuclear accident occurred in 1957 at a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant near the city, which led to the region to be inaccessible to visitors until 1992; and a meteor struck in 2013. By then, however, Ekaterina has already left her hometown.
Alexandrova discovered the game during a holiday in Spain, when she was five years old; she went with her parents to the court, and she started playing. She immediately enjoyed it and improved rapidly. Throughout the years, she got better and better, but being based in Chelyabinsk is not ideal for those who aim to compete at a high level. Ekaterina moved first to Moscow and then to Prague with her father and coach, Evgeny Alexandrov, to devote herself to her game.
She shared her story during two interviews in 2016 and 2017: “I used to train in Moscow, but once my whole family and I came to a tournament in Prague, and we immediately loved the place in all respects; there were many courts, and it’s also a beautiful city. We were simply charmed, and we decided to move to Czechia.” When the journalist asked her how long she had lived in Prague, she replied: “I think we have been here for about ten years, maybe a little more.” Given that she didn’t specify when the move happened exactly, we suppose that it must have occurred in 2007, when Ekaterina was about 13-14 years old. However, in 2009 she played a junior tournament in Prague; if we consider that moment as a starting point, it means that she moved to Czechia when she was a little older.
Since she moved to Prague, she faced a very particular condition. She couldn’t be a player of national importance for the Czech federation because she’s not from there – in addition, she couldn’t attend any meeting or training organized by the federation. However, she could train and improve her skills in an environment characterised by a historically great tennis culture (especially for women in recent years), with many top players. She travelled to several European tournaments with father Evgeny, and, when not on the road, she also trained with local coaches, such as former world N.138 Petr Kralert.
Due to her unique national condition, in the early years Ekaterina couldn’t be awarded any wildcards for major tournaments. Therefore, she missed opportunities to play against high-level opponents. Nevertheless, she could play in the Czech Extraliga, the Czech club competition. All the local top players took part in the competition (Kvitova, Pliskova, Strycova, Siniakova, Vondrousova, etc), as well as some foreign players like Sevastova – the Latvian has been her clubmate since 2017 for the “RPM Oaza Ricany” team (Oaza Ricany is a town located about 13 miles from Prague).
Moreover, she benefited from another typical perk of Bohemian tennis: it is well-known that physical and technical training takes place on two surfaces, clay during the summer and fast indoor courts during the cold season. Alexandrova has always stated that she does not like very much playing on clay and that she prefers fast courts, which allow her to keep the rally under his control and reduce the defensive phase.
One more anomaly is that she skipped the junior career. In fact, in the early years of her career Alexandrova played a limited number of junior tournaments (only 20 official matches), deciding to focus on ITF tournaments. Her first appearance in the rankings was in 2012, at 17 (N.782), and from then onwards she has experienced a steady progression, with just a couple of stumbles. Here are her end-of-season rankings from 2012 onwards: 782, 380, 228, 234, 108, 69, 71, 35, 25 (at the end of 2020). During the first years on the ITF circuit, she won tournaments that are not particularly renowned, but in some of these, she played and beat well-known opponents such as Bacsinszky, Paszek, Muchova.
A big breakout occurred in the 2016 season. In June, she was ranked around the 230th spot in the WTA rankings and she was about to take the first step in the biggest events, since her ranking finally granted her the opportunity to play the Grand Slam qualifiers at Wimbledon. To be honest, she was the first alternate in the original entry list, but due to the withdrawal of one player in the entry list, there was a spot for her in the Roehampton draw (Wimbledon’s qualies are not played on the grasscourts of Church Road, to safeguard their conditions). In the first round, she won against Ons Jabeur (the Tunisian is the same age as Ekaterina), then in the second round she defeated Stephanie Vogt 6-4 4-6 14-12 after saving a match point at 11-12. Without a rest day, it would have been tough to play the deciding match, but the rain came to help her, and every scheduled game was postponed by a day. The match against the local player Harriet Dart turned into another marathon: 2-6, 7-5, 13-11. She won after saving another match point at 10-11.
This was not the end of her dream run. Her match in the first round of the main draw was against Ana Ivanovic, N.25 in the rankings. It was Ana’s last year on the WTA Tour and she smarted from some wrist problems. Ekaterina, ranked 223rd, won the match against all odds, 6-2 7-5. She finally lost in the second round to Anna Lena Friedsam, but she earned 110 WTA points and roughly $76,000 in just one tournament, more than her total career prize money at that time. In November 2016, Alexandrova won the WTA125K at Limoges, defeating three French Top 100 players such as Parmentier, Cornet and Garcia. The Limoges tournament would then become her favourite, with two more titles in 2018 and 2019, further proof of how well she plays on indoor courts.
