Ekaterina Alexandrova

Ekaterina Alexandrova is the long answer to how far clean, flat ball-striking will take a player who simply refuses to leave. Born in Chelyabinsk in 1994, she moved with her family to the Czech Republic as a child and has trained out of Prague ever since, coached for years by her father Evgeny — a permanent fixture in her box. She started on the ITF Circuit in the early 2010s and broke through at major level via Wimbledon qualifying, coming through from outside the top 200 and beating a former world No. 1 in her Slam main-draw debut.

The game is first-strike tennis without apology: flat, early-struck groundstrokes off both wings, a heavy serve, and a willingness to take the ball on the rise and shorten points. It rewards fast, low-bouncing courts and punishes opponents who hand her time. The trade-off is the usual one for ball-strikers — when the margins thin out, the error count climbs, and she can be vulnerable to players who scramble and reset the rally.

The career arc is a slow build rather than a teenage explosion. Alexandrova collected her tour titles on indoor and grass-friendly surfaces, posted deep runs at the bigger hard-court events, and finally pushed into the top 10 in her thirties — a payoff for more than a decade of week-in, week-out grinding. On her day she's a problem for anyone in the draw, with wins over the likes of Aryna Sabalenka and Coco Gauff underlining that her ceiling reaches the very top.

Now ranked just outside the top 15, she remains one of the tour's more dangerous floaters — a seeded threat at events like Wimbledon and the Dubai Championships, where her flat power and the quicker conditions play directly to her strengths.