Nadia Podoroska
Nadia Natacha Podoroska (; born 10 February 1997) is an Argentine professional tennis player. She competed at the 2020 Summer Olympics. Podoroska has won one doubles title on the WTA Tour, along with 14 singles titles and seven doubles titles on the ITF Circuit. On 12 July 2021, she reached her best singles ranking of world No. 36 and she peaked at No. 62 in the WTA doubles rankings on 18 October 2021. Early life. Podoroska was born on February 10, 1997 in Rosario, Santa Fe Province, and grew up in a middle-class family in Fisherton, a neighborhood  founded in the late 1880s by railroad workers. She is one of three children born to father Marcelo and mother Irene; she is of Ukrainian descent as her grandparents were Ukrainian but she does not speak the language at all. Her father was a watchmaker by profession who over the years became a pharmacist, and her mother is also a pharmacist. She was the first in her family to play tennis, a sport that she began to practice at the Fisherton Athletic Club at the age of five. As a child, she followed the performances of the Argentine male tennis  players, especially Guillermo Cañas, although not so much of the national female representatives because they were broadcast infrequently on television. Among the female tennis players, she admired sisters Venus and Serena Williams. Her first years on the circuit were complicated, due to financial difficulties to compete internationally. In late 2017, she suffered several injuries that put her career in jeopardy. Upon her return, she took the decision of going to live in Alicante, Spain, to settle in Europe and have greater chances of competing weekly. In addition, she began to be trained by Juan Pablo Guzmán and Emiliano Redondi. She  added Pedro Merani to her team, with whom she performs a mental training based on bompu zen and neuroscience, an aspect that she considered important to change her attitude towards tennis and its matches. Professional career. 2020: French Open singles semifinal, top 50 & Newcomer of the Year. In October, Podoroska became the first qualifier to reach the semifinals of the French Open when she beat third seed Elina Svitolina in the quarterfinals at Roland Garros. Podoroska was named the WTA Newcomer of the Year for her rankings achievement and her solid performance throughout the season. 2021: French Open doubles semifinal , top 40 singles & top 100 doubles debut, Olympics debut. She continued her good form when she reached the quarterfinals of the Yarra Valley Classic by defeating fourth seeded Petra Kvitová. In May, at the Italian Open, she defeated 23 times Grand Slam champion and eighth seeded Serena Williams in the second round. This was her third top-ten win in the last eight months. Williams was playing her 1000th match of her career. At the French Open, Podoroska lost in the first round to tenth seed Belinda Bencic but reached the semifinals in doubles, partnering with Irina-Camelia Begu for  the first time. As a result, she reached the top 40 in singles and No. 69 in doubles for the first time in her career, on 14 June 2021. At the end of the year, Podoroska announced she was withdrawing from the 2022 Australian Open due to struggles with pain that hit her through the whole season, opting to rest and recover until March 2022. National representation. Playing for the Argentina Fed Cup team, Podoroska has a win–loss record of 12–8. She qualified to represent Argentina at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo and won against Kazakh Yulia Putintseva  by retirement to reach the second round, and Russian Ekaterina Alexandrova to reach the third round. Podoroska became the first Argentine woman to reach the round of 16 in Olympic tennis in the 21st century in singles. Only two Argentine female players have reached it 25 years ago, Gabriella Sabatini and Inés Gorrochategui in 1996 in Atlanta. Performance timelines. "Only main-draw results in WTA Tour, Grand Slam tournaments, Fed Cup/Billie Jean King Cup and Olympic Games are included in win–loss records." Singles. "Current through 2021 US Open."