Ekaterina Makarova

Ekaterina Makarova started playing tennis at age six and turned professional at age sixteen. She played her first main draw event in 2003 at Elektrostat, Russia at just fifteen years of age. She reached the semifinals of this $10,000 ITF tournament.

She qualified for another ITF tournament in Zhukovsky, Russia but lost to fellow Russian Anna Lapushchenkova. She didn’t play again for the rest of the year but by March of the next year, she qualified for the $10,000 ITF event at Cairo, Egypt and made it until the second round.

She earned her first ITF event at Turkey against Margalita Chakhnasshvili with $10,000 in prize money. She claimed her second title in Romania and went on to climb to the 595th ranking. With a quarter-finals finish at Minks, Belarus, she raised her ranking to 412 at the end of 2004.

In 2005, she entered matches in Great Britain and participated in her first $75,000 tournament in France and reaching the semi-final round. Her performance boosted her ranking to a 246th career best. She played her first US Open tournament in that year and gained a second-round finish.

In Moscow, she defeated World ranked No. 100 Michaela Pastikova but lost the second round. The year 2006 was spent by Makarova qualifying for ITF tournaments in Ortesi, Italy, Qatar, St. Petersburg and Biarritz, France. The same year, she finally finished runner-up in $25,000 tournament in Moscow to Evgeniya Rodina.

Makarova opened 2007 with a quarter-final finish at the Fort Walton Beach tournament. In Moscow, she again placed second at the $25,000 event losing to Anastasia Pivovarova. Her performance earned her entrance to the US Open and Wimbledon and ended the year with a 110 world tennis ranking.

She participated in the Australian Open in 2008 moving on to the third round defeating World No. 19 Agnes Svazay and No. 70 Yvonne Meusburger. She has since participated in all four Grand Slam tournaments this year reaching the third round of the US Open. She is currently ranked World No. 48.