Mladenovic, Peaking Or About To Be Peaking?

Mladenovic has been having an amazing run in these last couple of months, is she peaking? Or is this just the beginning? Today, she has just knocked out defending champ of the French Open, Roland Garros. I believe this is just the tip of the iceberg for the young french woman.

Born in a town on the coast of northeastern France a tennis prodigy was born to a family of athletes. Her two year younger brother a professional soccer player and her dad a professional handball player, Kristina just had to have the genes of a natural athlete. She had a very successful junior career, the 24 year old won a junior French Open title and fell to Noppawan Lertcheewakarn in the finals of Wimbledon. She was already showing signs of being the most successful pro athlete in her family yet.

After her junior days Mladenovic joined the ITF pro circuit and played there for 2 years until she received a wildcard into the prestigious Australian Open in 2009. She ended up losing in the first round to Patty Schnyder, it may have been a disappointing loss but it was a huge step forward. After that memorable Australian Open Kristina started playing on the WTA tour. She managed to qualify for Prague Open but again got let down in the first round, this time by Zarina Diyas. A couple months later Kristina managed to win her first main draw match on tour in three sets coming back from a 5-2 deficit in the third, this happened at the Internationaux de Strasbourg. It wall went uphill for the prodigy in 2011, she earned the privilege to represent France at the Hopman cup for the first time and qualified for Australian Open on her own merit. Over a year later in 2012 Mladenovic won her first ever WTA tour title in Taipei briefly after entering the top 100.

Mladenovic at the 2009 Roland Garros

Recently, in May Kristina had a remarkable run at the Stuttgart open defeating Kerber, Sharapova,Suarez Navarro and Lucic Baroni en route to achieving a second place finish at the event. After that, in Madrid Mladenovic managed an upset against Kuznetsova on her way to getting second again. Then in Rome she failed to keep her run going with a first round exit. Now in Roland Garros in front of her country’s people she defeated Paris’s reigning champ Muguruza, she will play her next match on Tuesday against 30th seed Bacsinszky. I believe this is just the start. This young prodigy has some great achievements and titles in store for her.

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