This article is part of On the Baseline’s 2009 Players to Watch Series. Please join us for a special look at several rising and resurgent stars on the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour.
Alisa Kleybanova is a young player who has served a long apprenticeship in the game. Five years since she won a 10k title in Spain in her senior debut, the 19 year-old is now only two places shy of the top 30, and has signaled her arrival at the top of professional tennis.
As far back as March 2004, Kleybanova made her WTA Tour debut, after she was remarkably handed a wildcard into the main draw at Indian Wells. She paid back the organizers good faith by beating Jelena Kostanic Tosic in the first round before losing to world number nineteen Anna Smashnova in the following round.
The youth’s good form propelled her to No. 316 in the rankings by the summer of 2004, but due to inactivity and a failure to defend her points, the fledging star slipped back to No. 730 in the rankings a year later.
Prior to 2008, Kleybanova made several unsuccessful attempts to reach the main draw at WTA events, each time falling in qualifying with the exception of Budapest. She also received wild cards into Indian Wells in 2005 and Miami in 2006, but lost in her opening matches to Anne Kremer and Virginie Razzano, respectively.
Nevertheless, between the second half of 2005 and the end of 2007, Kleybanova won an additional seven singles titles at the modest end of the ITF circuit, made her debut 50k final at Maestre, Italy, rose to No. 150 in the world, and had taken a few notable scalps including Ashley Harkleroad, Alexandra Stevenson, Sara Errani, and Pauline Parmentier.
2008 was a breakthrough year for Alisa Kleybanova. She came through qualifying to reach two Tier II quarterfinals at Antwerp and Eastbourne and debuted at all four grand slams. Kleybanova reached the second round of three majors, and the fourth round at Wimbledon.
This year the imposing Muscovite has stood at the opposite end of the court from stars such as Venus Williams and Lindsay Davenport, and defeated high ranking players Agnes Szavay and the seemingly ephemeral Daniela Hantuchova.
Playing the biggest match of her career so far at the 2008 Wimbledon Championships, Kleybanova kept pace with reigning champion Venus Williams in their fourth round tie, until a triple double-fault game late in the first set gave Venus the set. Venus then stepped it up for a 4-0 lead in the second before Kleybanova impressively retrieved a double break and saved three matchpoints. Williams eventually succeeded in closing the match out for a 6-3, 6-4 win.
But on that day the youngest player left in the draw had shown her sizable potential. She was just unable to handle the power and wingspan of Venus.
The strengths of Kleybanova’s game lie with her powerful groundstrokes and serving. She regularly serves in the 115-120 mph bracket, and uses her not insubstantial frame to lunge at the ball.
Despite full-time coaching by Iulian Vespan, the former coach of Hicham Arazi and Adrian Voinea, Kleybanova’s tennis is not without its unschooled charms. Rather like Marion Bartoli, you look at it all and think it’s not going to work, then you do a double-take and see that somehow it does, contrary to expectation. For example, Kleybanova has a habit of staring down at her shoes during her two-handed backhands, and of snapping her neck in a most awkward fashion mid-shot.
Over the past 12 months we have seen young prodigies such as Anna Chakvetadze, Agnes Szavay, and Tamira Paszek retreat in the rankings after making an initially impressive impact.
In order to avoid a similar pitfall the tall and large framed Kleybanova should work on her fitness, footwork, and speed around court. Her impressive powerballing and offensive game has taken her this far, but over the years to come she should be looking at developing more dimension to her game. Working on these things will not only help her win matches, but also reduce recurrence of her back injury and other injuries which put her out of several tournaments this year.
In addition to the physical and technical aspects of the game, another area to improve is concentration, and restricting those bouts of mid-match verbal reproach.
Alisa Kleybanova comes across as a bubbly and thoroughly likeable young lady. The public will surely warm to her as they get to know this girl by her talent and successes.
She is here to stay.
Alice Cochrane resides in Scotland, and began Marion Bartoli Fan Blog in July of 2007. Alice recently became editor and owner of the long running fansite, marion-bartoli.net.
Alice, thank you for joining our series this year. Excellent piece!