Biography Already bagging two Grand Slam titles to her kitty, Mary Pierce is a well-known French tennis player. Mary was born on January 15th, 1975 in Montreal, Canada to an American father Jim Pierce and a French mother Yannick Adjani while on a trip of her mother to the city. Soon after her birth, her parents got married and year after her brother David was born. Initially Pierce’s father has joined a Golf club and persuaded her daughter to join the club’s junior tennis clinic. After watching couple of sessions of his athletic 10 year old daughter and seeing that extra prodigy in her, father Jim left the Golf and concentrated on shaping the tennis career of his daughter. He then studied the game in detail and finally became her coach.
As a child, she learnt Gymnastic and Ballet dancing and participated in many events. But as she started excelling in tennis, her father pulled both the siblings out of the school so that they would be free to travel to participate in tennis events. Later their mother supported in their studies and both of them joined correspondence course to complete their high school education.
Mary is mostly known for her two-handed backhand and powerful serve, including a kick second serve, she and Monica Seles were among the first female players to regularly hit drive volleys. Mary is 1.80m tall and weighs 61kg. She now resides both in Paris, France and in Bradenton, Florida (USA) near Nick Bollitieri's training facilities. Her best career ranking is #3 in the world and till date she has won four Grand Slam titles, tow in singles and two in doubles and reached Grand Slam singles finals for six times. She has won 18 WTA singles title and 10 WTA double titles including five Tier I single events.
Career in Tennis
She was a child with spontaneous talent and ruled the court with her racquet just two weeks after taking up the game defeating a local player who ranked 20th in a 12-and-under division tournament, and by the age of 12, she was in 2nd position in the United States in 12-and-under division.
Pierce played professional tournament at the age of 14 years and 2 months at Hilton Head tournament in 1989 and set the record of youngest player to play a professional tournament, but that record was later broken by Jennifer Capriati. She continued with her game but was unable to make significant impact on the tour until she rose up to top ten for the first time in 1994. Competition was tough for Mary but she was successful in bagging the Grand Slam title at Australian Open in Melbourne in 1995 and became the first French woman to capture a major win since 1967 after a gap of 28 years.
Pierce suffered a series of defeat in the year 1996. She failed to defend her title at the 1996 Australian Open that resulted in her split with Coach Nick Bollettieri. She finishes as a runner up in Amelia Island, Florida and semifinal finish in Hamburg and also made her first appearance in Wimbledon reaches up to quarterfinal.
Mary Pierce then went on to win Italian Open in 1997 defeating Conchita Martinez in the final 6–4, 6–0. In 1998, she added four more success to her kitty playing games in Paris, Moscow, Luxembourg and Amelia Island and was the runner up in San Diego.
Year 2000 brought many successes to her credit. She won her second Grand Slam single and Grand Slam double title in French Open tournament in 2000 defeating Conchita Martínez of Spain 6-2, 7-5 in single and Virginia Ruano Pascual of Spain and Paola Suárez of Argentina in double partnering with Martina Hingis of Switzerland.
She became Fed Cup champ again in 2003 and that was the second win she achieved for her country.
In 2005 French Open, she reached the singles final for the third time however she lost the game to Justine Henin 6–1, 6–1. She reached to the quarterfinals of Wimbledon and was defeated by Venus Williams. She won the mixed double title at Wimbledon teaming up with Mahesh Bhupathi of India. She reached to the final of 2005 U.S Open but unfortunately defeated by Henin for the first time in her career by 6–3, 6–4. But she again was successful in winning her first single title of that season in San Diego, defeating Ai Sugiyama in the final. At the beginning of 2005, she ranked 29th but she made a considerable improvement in game that year and reached to 5th position by the end of that season. Such improvement also encouraged Martina Hingis to return to game.
She began the 2006 season with Australian Open, She defeated Nicole Pratt of Australia 6–1, 6–1 in the first round before losing to Iveta Benešová of the Czech Republic in the second round 6–3, 7–5. She tehn took aprt in Gaz de France in Paris, she reached the final round but lost to Amélie Mauresmo 6–1, 7–6(6). She again participated in Acura Classic in San Diego, where she lost in the quarterfinals to Maria Sharapova 6–2, 6–3.
But at the end of 2006 while playing a match in Linz against Vera Zvonareva she fractured her anterior cruciate ligament in her left knee and went a successful operation in December 2006. To recuperate her injuries she took a complete break and did not participate in any tournaments in 2007 but give an appearance in 2007 French Open as an avenue at Roland Garros. But she has announced that she has no plan of retirement anytime soon, and wants to compete again and accomplish more success. She is fervently looking forward to take part in 2008 Beijing Olympics.
After splitting with her father Jim in 1993, she was coached by Nick Bollettieri with whom she again split up 1996 failing to defend her title at the Australian Open. Her brother David too coached her ion regular basis until 2006. After reconciling with her father Jim lately, she has started taking up occasional coaching session with him.
