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Magdalena Maleeva (born April 1, 1975) is a successful Bulgarian
tennis player. She has played in the WTA tour, competing in singles and doubles,
since April 1989. Her best position in the WTA Tour was 4 between January
29 to February 4 1996.
Biography
Born in Sofia, Magdalena was the youngest of the four children
of Yulia Berberyan and Georgi Maleev. The mother, who came from a prominent
Armenian family which found refuge in Bulgaria after the 1896 Armenian massacres
in the Ottoman Empire, was the best Bulgarian tennis player in the 1960s.
After she retired from professional tennis in the 1970s, Berberyan started
on a coaching career. She trained all of her three daughters, Magdalena,
Katerina and Manuela, each of whom eventually became WTA top ten players.
In 1988 Magdalena became the youngest ever national tennis
champion of Bulgaria, at the age of 13 years and four months. She turned
professional in 1989 reaching the final of her first professional tournament
at ITF/Bari-ITA. In her Grand Slam debut at the French Open in 1990, she
passed the qualifications and reached the third round. In 1992 Magdalena
snatched her first Tour event victory in San Marino. The following year she
reached the quarterfinals at the Australian, the French and the US Open,
as well as the third round of Wimbledon. In 1995 Magdalena won a total of
three tournaments – in Moscow, Chicago, Oakland, which allowed her to
reach a career-high in 4 the WTA rank list in January 1996.
In June 1998 Magdalena underwent shoulder surgery, which
forced her off the Tour for the next eleven months. She started competing
again in May 1999 and reached Top Twenty again in 2002. In 2004 she married
her long-standing boyfriend, Lyubomir Nokov.
Since the start of her professional carrier, Magdalena has
won a total of ten WTA Tour titles in singles and four in doubles. She is
the recipient of the 1993 WTA Tour Most Improved Player Award and was nominated
for the 1990 WTA Tour Most Impressive Newcomer Award.
In 2005, Magdalena retired from professional tennis, ending
the era of the Maleeva Sisters.
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