Julián Alonso Pintor (born 2 August 1977) is a Spanish-American former professional
tennis player
Tennis is a racket sport that is played either individually against a single opponent (singles) or between two teams of two players each (doubles). Each player uses a tennis racket that is strung with cord to strike a hollow rubber ball cove ...
, who turned professional in 1995 and retired in 2003. He was known in tennis because of his powerful serve and Forehand compared with the
Goran Ivanišević
Goran Ivanišević (; born 13 September 1971) is a Croatian former professional tennis player and current coach. He is the only player to win a The Championships, Wimbledon, Wimbledon singles title as a Wild card (sports)#Professional tennis, w ...
´s service. In 1997, playing against Ivanisevic (2nd seeded), in Long Island, beat him for first Top 10 victory en route to semifinal and in that match fired a 143 mph serve to become just third player ( Philippoussis, Rusedski) to register a serve of at least 143. He is the co-founder of ALONSO GOMEZ TEAM, a Tennis Academy located in Coral Gables FL (Biltmore Tennis Center) and co- Founder of ELITE TENNIS TEAM with
Pere Riba
Pere Riba Madrid (, ; born 7 April 1988) is a Spanish former professional tennis player. Riba competed on the ATP Challenger Tour and the ATP World Tour, both in singles and doubles. He reached his highest ATP singles ranking, No. 65, on May 16, ...
in Barcelona (Club tennis Els Gorchs) focusing on junior development and also is coaching pro players
Leylah Fernandez
Leylah Annie Fernandez (born 6 September 2002) is a Canadian professional tennis player. She has a career-high ranking of No. 13 by the Women's Tennis Association (WTA), achieved on 8 August 2022. Fernandez won her first WTA Tour title at the 20 ...
Mirjana Lučić-Baroni
Mirjana Lučić-Baroni (; ; born 9 March 1982) is a Croatian former professional tennis player. She enjoyed a meteoric rise on the WTA Tour in the late 1990s, during which she set several "youngest-ever" records. She captured the women's doubles ...
,
Sabine Lisicki
Sabine Katharina Lisicki (; born 22 September 1989) is a German professional tennis player.
Lisicki turned professional in 2006, and her breakthrough came in 2009 when she reached the quarterfinals of the Wimbledon Championships, and also won h ...
,
Ajla Tomljanović
Ajla Tomljanović ( ; ; born 7 May 1993) is an Australian professional tennis player. She has won four singles and three doubles titles on the ITF Circuit. On 31 October 2022, she reached a career-high singles ranking of world No. 33. On 5 Janu ...
,
Varvara Lepchenko Varvara (Cyrillic: Варвара; el, Βαρβάρα, ''Varvára''), a variant of " Barbara", may refer to:
Places
* Varvara, Azerbaijan
* Varvara, Prozor, on the Rama river, Bosnia and Herzegovina
* Varvara, Burgas Province, Bulgaria
* Varvara ...
and
Nicolas Almagro
Nicolas or Nicolás may refer to:
People Given name
* Nicolas (given name)
Mononym
* Nicolas (footballer, born 1999), Brazilian footballer
* Nicolas (footballer, born 2000), Brazilian footballer
Surname Nicolas
* Dafydd Nicolas (c.1705–1774), ...
.
Married to Arantxa Vivanco and father of two children.
Tennis career
Alonso was awarded the
ATP Newcomer of the Year
This is a list of all the awards given by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) to players and others of particular distinction during a given season.
Player & Team of the Year
The ATP Player and Team of the Year awards are presently give ...
prize after winning his first ATP title in
Santiago
Santiago (, ; ), also known as Santiago de Chile, is the capital and largest city of Chile as well as one of the largest cities in the Americas. It is the center of Chile's most densely populated region, the Santiago Metropolitan Region, whose ...
and finishing in the Top 30 in 1997. In the final of the tournament, he defeated
Marcelo Ríos
Marcelo Andrés Ríos Mayorga (; born 26 December 1975) is a Chilean former world No. 1 tennis player. Nicknamed ''"El Chino"'' ("The Chinese") and ''"El zurdo de Vitacura"'' ("The Lefty from Vitacura"), he became the first Latin American play ...
Tim Henman
Timothy Henry Henman (born 6 September 1974) is a British former professional tennis player. Henman played a serve-and-volley style of tennis. He was the first British man to reach the singles semifinals of Wimbledon since Roger Taylor in the ...
after being defeated by Alonso at "The Lipton" Key Biscayne (current Miami open) declared: "''Julian will be the next number 1 in the World before Wimbledon''"
After this promising start, however, his career is considered underwhelming; he only won one more title (
Bologna
Bologna (, , ; egl, label= Emilian, Bulåggna ; lat, Bononia) is the capital and largest city of the Emilia-Romagna region in Northern Italy. It is the seventh most populous city in Italy with about 400,000 inhabitants and 150 different nat ...
, 1998) and retired in 2003 after half year playing only Challengers. He confessed that the decline of his career started with the relationship with
Martina Hingis
Martina Hingis (, sk, Martina Hingisová; 30 September 1980) is a Swiss former professional tennis player. Hingis is the first Swiss player, male or female, to win a major title and attain a world No. 1 ranking. She spent a total of 209 weeks a ...
. The pressure of the media and his mother-in-law made Alonso's ranking and self-confidence fall. He reached his career-high ATP singles ranking of world No. 29 in June 1998 (after winning his second and final title). He used to play doubles in
Davis Cup
The Davis Cup is the premier international team event in men's tennis. It is run by the International Tennis Federation (ITF) and is contested annually between teams from competing countries in a knock-out format. It is described by the organis ...
Spanish team with
Joan Balcells
Joan Manel Balcells Fornaguera (born 20 June 1975) is a retired professional tennis player from Spain. He won one ATP Tour singles title in his career and reached the final in Scottsdale in 2002 (losing to Andre Agassi) and the semifinals in ...