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Slowly as she goes for Myskina
It's been a relentless if unspectacular climb to the top for 22-year-old Anastasia Myskina since she turned professional in 1996.
It's been a relentless if unspectacular climb to the top for 22-year-old Anastasia Myskina since she turned professional in 1996.
Not blessed with the height and physical attributes that mark some of her compatriots, the Muscovite instead depends on an acute tactical sense, a low unforced errors count and a battling spirit.
Like her opponent in the final, Elena Dementieva, Myskina took up tennis in Moscow's Spartak club, better-known for its football and ice hockey teams.
She played her first WTA tour qualifying in Moscow in 1996 and the following year won her first pro title at a challenger event in Georgia defeating none other than childhood friend Dementieva in the final.
In 1999 she managed to break into the world top 100 and then won her first WTA Tour title in Palermo where again she defeated Dementieva in the semi-finals.
Myskina reached the second round of the 2000 Sydney Olympics, but although her world ranking edged upwards each year, she failed to make much of an impact in the Grand Slam events.
That changed in 2003 when she made the quarter-finals at the Australian and US Opens and the fourth round at Wimbledon which saw her break into the world top 10, ending the year ranked seventh.
This year, Myskina's star has burned brighter yet again with another quarter-final run in the Australian Open where she gave eventual finalist Kim Clijsters a scare and she came to Paris ranked a career best fifth.
She survived a marathon against compatriot Svetlana Kuznetsova in the fourth round winning 8-6 in the third and then put together impressive straight sets wins over American stars Venus Williams and Jennifer Capriati.
Usually a calm and controlled player, Myskina hit the headlines in January during a match at the Australian Open where she threw a spectacular tantrum at her coach Jens Gerlach accusing him of not giving her enough encouragement.
Myskina says that she drew great inspiration from Olga Morozova, the Russian player who made the Wimbledon and French Open finals in the 1970s and who ironically is now travelling coach with Dementieva.
"She was really something big for us. We didn't really have a lot of tennis on TV back at that time. But we read books about her and if somebody brought tapes we would watch those, she was a kind of idol for us," she said.
