Sorana Cirstea

Sorana Mihaela Cîrstea, (Romanian pronunciation: ; born 7 April 1990) is a Romanian tennis player. Her career high rank was World No. 23, achieved on 17 August 2009, after she reached the quarterfinals of the 2009 French Open and the semifinals of the 2009 Los Angeles Open.
Cîrstea has a neat, controlled style that minimises mistakes. According to the Tennis Spy, she does not appear to be fast around the court, but actually is deceptively quick covering the ground with her long strides and good reading of the game.As a good doubles player, she is also a very solid volleyer, and also has solid groundstrokes.Forehand and backhands are delivered with plenty of zip and punch, whipping through the ball quickly on both sides. Cîrstea seems lacking a little when it comes to delivering the final blow: in her third–round defeat to Victoria Azarenka at the 2009 Wimbledon Championships, for example, she dominated the first set but was unable find the crucial points to wrap things up, and lost in a tie–break. Despite her competence at the net, she often seems to lack the confidence to charge in and take control of the point.
Cîrstea was born to Mihai and Liliana in Bucharest ,but currently resides in Târgovişte. She also has a brother, Mihnea, five years her junior. Cîrstea was introduced to tennis at age of four by mother, "My mum and dad have always followed tennis and they encouraged me to start playing the sport when I was young. They're the reason I started to play tennis and I guess they are the ones I should thank for getting me into it". She cited Steffi Graf and Roger Federer as her idols. Cîrstea speaks Romanian, English and Spanish, and is improving her French Her good friends on the WTA Tour include Caroline Wozniacki, Sabine Lisicki, Maria Kirilenko and Sania Mirza.
She is a former ITF Junior Circuit top-ten player, reaching her highest ranking of number six on June 26, 2006. Her best results include a title in the 2005 German Junior Open (Grade 1) defeating Erika Zanchetta 6–2 6–7 6–3 in the final, a tournament she was finalist the year before and a runner-up place in the 2006 Trofeo Bonfiglio (Grade A) where she lost in the final to her compatriot Ioana Raluca Olaru after having defeated the then-top ranked world junior player Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova in the semifinals. Cîrstea lost in the finals of the doubles tournament at the 2007 French Open, when she and Alexa Glatch lost 6–1, 6–4 to the third seeds, Ksenia Milevskaya and Urszula Radwańska. She also made final appearances at the year-ending ITF Grade 1 juniors tournaments Eddie Herr International and Yucatán World Cup in 2005 and 2006, and in the Opus Nottinghill International in 2006.
In April 2007, she reached the final of the Budapest Grand Prix, a Tier III event held in Budapest, Hungary, as a qualifier. During the tournament, all of her main draw matches were pushed to three sets. She beat Martina Müller in the second round, Eleni Daniilidou in the quarter-finals and Karin Knapp in the semi-finals before losing to Gisela Dulko in the final and won the first set, when Dulko won her first title by the scoreline of 6–7², 6–2, 6–2. By making it to the final, she became the first Romanian player to reach a Tour final since Ruxandra Dragomir in June 2000. During her run, she beat two players ranked inside the WTA top 40.
Cîrstea began the year ranked 36th, losing to Dinara Safina at the Medibank International in Sydney 2–6 1–6. In the doubles tournament, she partnered with Vera Dushevina and reached the second round, defeating Kuznetsova/Petrova 6–2 3–6 10–6 and losing to Black/Huber 4–6 6–2 6–10. At the Australian Open, she lost in the first round of the singles tournament to Melinda Czink 2–6 2–6, but reached the second round of the doubles tournament with partner Monica Niculescu, defeating Ditty/Gullickson 6–3 2–6 6–3 and losing to Dechy/Santangelo 2–6 2–6.
As a singles player, Cîrstea lost in the first rounds of the 2009 Open GDF Suez and Barclays Dubai Tennis Championships, to Natalie Dechy and Dominika Cibulková respectively. In doubles, she again partnered with Monica Niculescu for the Open GDF Suez, reaching the semifinals of the tournament before injury forced them to lose in a walkover to Peschke/Raymond. In Dubai, she partnered with Arina Rodionova and lost in the first round to Kirilenko/Radwańska 5–7 4–6.