Maria Kirilenko - Official website

Interview of Maria in Russian before to play against Caroline Wozniacki

In the mixed doubles tournament of  Wimbledon, Maria and Igor Andreev won saturday in the first round against Andy Ram (ISR) and Anna Chakvetadze (RUS). The score : 6-2, 3-6, 6-2. To see the statistics of this match, click here.

Unfortunalty, Igor and Maria doesn’t play the next round against Christopher Kas (GER) and Chia-Jung Chuang (TPE).

To see the mixed doubles results, click here.

Photos by Stéphane Martinache

Hey,

My name is Andrew and I’m 16 from Warwick, England.
I met Maria at the AEGON Classic at Edgbaston two weeks ago.
She was incredibly nice and such a warm hearted person.
She’s a very pretty girl and a fantastic tennis player.
I also saw Sharapova that day, but she was nowhere near as nice as Miss Kirilenko.
All the best for the tennis season.

Best wishes
Andrew

Like Andrew, you went to a tournament and you took some photos of Maria ?
You already met Maria and you took a photo with her ?

Send your photo and tell us the story of your meet with Maria.
maria@mkirilenko.com

I went to Eastbourne for the very first time (14/06/09). I saw Maria Kirilenko one of my favourite WTA players on the tour. Maria was in a close doubles match encounter where she and her partner J.Husarova beat J.Craybas and A.Kudryavtseva (6-2, 5-7, 19-17) in a final set tie-break. I asked Maria for a photo which she kindly accepted. This purely made my day Maria is a gifted tennis player and extremely kind to all of her fans.

Dean

Like Dean, you went to a tournament and you took some photos of Maria ?
You already met Maria and you took a photo with her ?

Send your photo and tell us the story of your meet with Maria.
maria@mkirilenko.com

Maria played thursday on the Centre Court the second round of Wimbledon Grand Slam tournament against a very strong Caroline Wozniacki. The Danish defeated Maria in one hour and 14 minutes. The score : 6-0, 6-4. To see the statistics of this match, click here.

To see the singles results, click here.

Match reports (wimbledon.org)
Danish teenager Caroline Wozniacki underlined her credentials as an exciting new talent on the women’s tour as she defeated the Russian, Maria Kirilenko, 6-0, 6-4 in one hour 14 minutes on Centre Court.

Although only 18, Wozniacki came into the 2009 Championships as 9th seed after winning the pre-Wimbledon tournament at Eastbourne. Having reached the third round she has equalled her debut performance in 2008.

Wozniacki had defeated the 22-year-old Kirilenko for the loss of just two games in their only previous encounter, at Indian Wells in March last year, and it seemed for a long time in this match that she would even improve on that one-sided occasion.

She swept the opening set in only 26 minutes and when she extended the run of straight games to nine in this battle of two pony-tailed blondes sporting white visors, Wozniacki seemed headed for a ‘double bagel’ win.

Her forehand, struck with an exaggerated follow-through in the manner of the great Steffi Graf, inflicted serious damage on Kirilenko, and the Dane even enjoyed the occasional spot of good fortune to deepen the Muscovite’s woes.

The first indications that this match might not turn out to be the ultimate cakewalk came in the second game of the second set. Although she eventually dropped serve in a long deuce contest, Kirilenko dramatically upped her work rate, accompanied by a sharply escalating level of shrieking, and suddenly Wozniacki’s stroll was transformed into a decent contest for the spectators awaiting the arrival of Andy Murray in the next match.

From nine games down, Kirilenko won four of the next five games to draw level at 4-4. She especially enjoyed holding serve from 0-40 down in the eighth game. But then, as quickly as the counter-attack had been mounted, it petered out against Wozniacki’s relentess hitting. Having held to love to go 5-4 ahead, the Dane then broke Kirilenko to 15 and proceeded to blow kisses to the crowd, a la Sharapova.