Biography of Women's Tennis Star Amélie Mauresmo

The Road to Number 1

If you’re watching tennis and don’t know Amélie Mauresmo, it’s time you did. She is the top seed at this year’s Wimbledon tennis tournament and set to take on reigning queen Venus Williams in the quarter-final round.

Amélie Simone Mauresmo was born July 5, 1979 in Saint-German-en-Laye, France. At the age of 4 she was so enthralled watching a French Open match on TV that her parents buy her a racquet and enrolled her in lessons. At age 11, her budding talent prompted an invite from the Fédération Française du Tennis, the French Tennis Federation (FFT) to join the Tennis/School program in Blois.

At 14 years old, Amélie enrolled at INSEP Vincennes, a national institute for sports and physical education. Training for a year with Gail Lovera, ex-French No.1 from Australia, Amélie acquires Lovera’s topspin one-handed backhand an asset which revolutionized her personal game.

A year later, in 1994, Amélie trained at the national training centre at Roland Garros, the Centre d’Entrainement National and turns pro with the help of Patrick Simon, one of her first coaches. By 1996, she captured the Junior French Open and was named Junior World Champion by the International Tennis Federation.

In 1997, at the age of 18, Mauresmo injected her tennis game by working with a private coach, Warwick Bashford, a South African living in France. The next year she broke out at the German Open in Berlin where although ranked 65, she defeated world No. 2 Lindsay Davenport, No. 3 Jana Novotna and No. 14 Dominique Van Roost. The wins gave her the honor of being the lowest ranked player ever to defeat two of the world’s top three players in a tournament. She ended that year with a ranking of No. 29 and voted the Best Newcomer of the Year 1998 by the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA).