Katerina Georgieva Maleeva ( bg, Катерина Георгиева Малеева; born 7 May 1969) is a former top 10 Bulgarian tennis player. She won eleven singles and two doubles

WTA Tour The WTA Tour is a worldwide top-tier tennis tour for women organized by the Women's Tennis Association. The second-tier tour is the WTA 125K series, and third-tier is the ITF Women's Circuit. The men's equivalent is the ATP Tour. WTA Tour tou ...

titles. Her best position in the

WTA rankings The WTA rankings are the ratings defined by the Women's Tennis Association, introduced in November 1975. Iga Świątek is the current world No. 1. Ranking method The WTA rankings are based on a rolling 52-week, cumulative system. A pla ...

was No. 6 in 1990.

Biography

Born in

Sofia Sofia ( ; bg, София, Sofiya, ) is the capital and largest city of Bulgaria. It is situated in the Sofia Valley at the foot of the Vitosha mountain in the western parts of the country. The city is built west of the Iskar river, and h ...

, Maleeva is the second oldest of the three children of Georgi Maleev and

Yuliya Berberyan Yuliya Berberyan-Maleeva ( bg, Юлия Берберян-Малеева; born 6 October 1944) is a former Bulgarian tennis player. She and her husband, Georgi Maleev, had three daughters, Manuela, Katerina, and Magdalena, who were coached by th ...

. Her mother came from an Armenian family, which found refuge in Bulgaria after the 1896 Armenian massacres in the

Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire, * ; is an archaic version. The definite article forms and were synonymous * and el, Оθωμανική Αυτοκρατορία, Othōmanikē Avtokratoria, label=none * info page on book at Martin Luther University ...

, and was the best Bulgarian tennis player in the 1960s. After she retired from professional tennis in the 1970s, Berberyan started a coaching career. She was the coach of her three daughters, Katerina, Manuela and Magdalena, each of whom eventually became WTA top 10 players. Throughout her professional career, Maleeva has won a total of 11 WTA singles titles and two titles in doubles. In July 1990, she achieved her career-high ranking of sixth. She has a record of 369 singles wins and 210 losses. In 1994, she married Georgi Stoimenov, before retiring in 1997. The couple have two children and currently live in Sofia.

Major finals

Grand Slam tournament finals

Doubles: 1 (runner-up)

Performance timelines

Singles

Doubles

WTA career finals

Singles: 20 (11 titles, 9 runner-ups)

Doubles: 10 (2 titles, 8 runner–ups)

ITF Circuit finals

Singles: 2 (1–1)

Doubles: 1 (1–0)

Junior Grand Slam tournament finals

Singles: 2 (1 title, 1 runner-up)

In 1984 US open junior she defeated steffi graf in semis 7-5,7-6 & finally got the titles... but in doubles she partnered with steffi & lost in round 1 from niurka sodupe/shawn foltz 4-6,6-4,3-6

Fed Cup

Katerina Maleeva debuted for the

Bulgaria Fed Cup team The Bulgaria women's national tennis team represents Bulgaria in Billie Jean King Cup tennis competition and are governed by the Bulgarian Tennis Federation. In 2022, Bulgaria competed in the Europe/Africa Zone Group I event in Antalya, where t ...

in 1984. Since then she has a 20–9 singles record and a 9–13 doubles record (29–22 overall).

Singles (20–9)

Doubles (9–13)

*RPO = Relegation Play-off

References

External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Maleeva, Katerina 1969 births Living people Bulgarian female tennis players Bulgarian people of Armenian descent Olympic tennis players of Bulgaria Sportspeople from Sofia Tennis players at the 1988 Summer Olympics Tennis players at the 1992 Summer Olympics US Open (tennis) junior champions Grand Slam (tennis) champions in girls' singles Katerina