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In hindsight, it looks like tennis was only a means for Anna to enter the public mindspace and then pursue a modelling career.
Though she was highly spoken of as a junior, she fell victim to her image. People rarely took the blonde and beautiful Russian seriously on court. After sometime she stopped making an attempt.
Her best singles showing was a semi-final finish at Wimbledon in 1997. She teamed up with Martina Hingis and won the Australian Open doubles title in 1999 and 2002.
Anna, who was now better known as singer Enrique Iglesias's love interest, formally retired in 2003.
Hingis and she were the most promising players of the mid-1990s but both girls, after taking different routes for a while, left the game without fulfilling that potential.
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