Former WTA Tour star Anna Chakvetadze played Serena Williams, Justine Henin and Maria Sharapova multiple times, and she has told Tennis365 about the different challenges that came with facing these three tennis icons.<\/p>\n
Chakvetadze played her first professional match in 2003 and she reached great heights in women\u2019s tennis before being forced to retire at the age of just 26 due to a chronic back injury in 2013.<\/p>\n
The Russian attained a career-high ranking of world No 5 in September 2007 after reaching the US Open semi-finals and the Australian Open and French Open quarter-finals that year.<\/p>\n
Chakvetadze secured eight WTA Tour<\/a> singles titles, with her biggest triumph coming at the 2006 Kremlin Cup in Moscow \u2014 a Tier I (WTA 1000 equivalent) event.<\/p>\n Asked who was the toughest opponent she faced, Chakvetadze could not choose between Williams, Henin and Sharapova \u2014 while she also gave a mention to Kim Clijsters.<\/p>\n \u201cSerena, of course, when she was in top form, was one of the toughest opponents,\u201d Chakvetadze said in an exclusive interview with Tennis365.<\/p>\n \u201cHer power and especially her serve made her incredibly difficult to play against.<\/p>\n \u201cAt the same time, players with a very different style also caused a lot of trouble. Justine Henin, with her variety, creativity and all-court game, was an extremely difficult opponent as well \u2014 her diversity created many problems for almost every player.<\/p>\n \u201cMaria Sharapova was a true fighter \u2014 mentally very strong, technically excellent, and also equipped with tremendous power. As a counter-punching, defensive player without huge power shots, it was always a big challenge for me to face players like that.<\/p>\n \u201cKim Clijsters was also an incredibly mobile and athletic player.\u201d<\/p>\n Former world No 5 compares Sabalenka, Swiatek, Gauff to her own era in \u2018less diverse\u2019 verdict<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Former world No 5 who beat Serena Williams gives verdict on icon\u2019s potential comeback<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Chakvetadze added: \u201cIn reality, they were all great in their own way at different moments in time \u2014 sometimes one was stronger, sometimes another \u2014 but it was always difficult.<\/p>\n \u201cAt the same time, it was incredibly interesting to test myself against the very best players in the world. It was an amazing period of my career and a truly great challenge that I\u2019m grateful for.\u201d<\/p>\n Chakvetadze did not register a win against the Belgian duo of Henin and Clijsters, while she lost all seven of her encounters with her Russian compatriot Sharapova.<\/p>\n The former world No 5 did, though, defeat Williams in the pair\u2019s first meeting at the 2007 WTA Tour Championships (now WTA Finals) in Madrid.<\/p>\n In the round robin stage match, Chakvetadze took the opening set 6-4 before Williams was forced to retire due to an injury.<\/p>\n Williams, Henin, Sharapova and Clijsters all topped the WTA Rankings and won multiple Grand Slam titles during the 2000s, but how do their career major hauls stack up?<\/p>\n READ NEXT: Serena Williams comeback date and location predicted by former British No 1<\/a> The post What made Serena Williams, Maria Sharapova & Justine Henin so good? WTA star who played them reveals<\/a> appeared first on Tennis365<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Former WTA Tour star Anna Chakvetadze played Serena Williams, Justine Henin and Maria Sharapova multiple times, and she has told Tennis365 about the different challenges that came with facing these three tennis icons. Chakvetadze played her first professional match in 2003 and she reached great heights in women\u2019s tennis before being forced to retire at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1456\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}What did Anna Chakvetadze say about Serena Williams, Justine Henin and Maria Sharapova?<\/h2>\n
Exclusive Interviews<\/h2>\n
What is Anna Chakvetadze\u2019s record against Serena Williams, Justine Henin, Maria Sharapova and Kim Clijsters?<\/h2>\n
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How many Grand Slams did Serena Williams, Justine Henin, Maria Sharapova and Kim Clijsters win?<\/h2>\n
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