Tennis is All in the Family
Professional tennis is filled with stories of family sacrifices to help a talented tennis prodigy achieve greatness, e.g. Maria Sharapova, parents who also serve as tennis coaches and simply strong family bonds as exhibited by the number of family members usually sitting in the “players box” at tournaments. In addition, the tennis world has had several very successful “tennis families” in every generation. For example, a couple
decades ago there were the McEnroe brothers, i.e. John and Patrick and the Evert sisters, i.e. Chris and Jeanne, as well as the Amritraj brothers, i.e. Vijay, Anand and Ashok, and the Maleeva sisters, i.e. Manuela, Katerina and Maggie. Currently, there are several sibling pairs competing on both the ATP Tour and the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour in addition to the most famous tennis siblings of this generation, i.e. Serena Williams and Venus Williams. For example, the Bob and Mike Bryan have become legends on the doubles court while the Ukrainian sisters, Alona and Kateryna Bondarenko recently captured the women’s doubles title at the 2008 Australian Open. Scotsman, Andy Murray, has made a name for himself on the ATP Tour as the next great hope of British tennis while his brother, Jamie, already has a Wimbledon title in mixed doubles with Jelena Jankovic. Russia has also produced the talented brother and sister pair, i.e. Marat Safin and sister, Dinara. Clearly, there is competition between siblings who are competing on the pro tennis Tour, but they are also able to share the unique experience of being a professional athlete. That’s what is truly amazing… it is such a long road to achieve success as a professional tennis player and even more impressive that so many families have produced more than one pro tennis player.
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