Peer, Shahar

Childhood

Born in Jerusalem, in the family of an engineer and physical education teacher. Later, the family moved to the settlement of Modiin-Maccabim-Reut (15 km from Jerusalem ). She grew up an active child and at the age of six she began to play tennis. The coaches immediately drew attention to the girl who stood out in all aspects of the game. One of the mentors, a repatriate from Russia, predicted Shakhar a great future, others took her prospects more restrained, but everyone noted the girl’s talent, hard work and excellent physical characteristics.

Service at the IDF

In October 2005, Shahar was drafted for two years into the army, but was drafted in the status of “excellent athlete,” which gives her the opportunity to train, travel abroad and provides a variety of benefits. She served in one of the mobilization centers of Tel Aviv .

Play style

Shahar Peer plays accurately and powerfully, moving very quickly around the court. She is known for her brush strokes.

Start

At age 14, Shahar wins the title of champion of Israel among adults, becoming the youngest winner of the national championship. In the same year, she wins the Orange Bowl , one of the main junior tennis trophies in the world, in the age group under 14 years. Already in 2002, she began speaking for the national team in the Federation Cup , and at 16 she became the winner of the Australian Open among girls ^[2] .

In 2004, Peer became a professional tennis player. She beat Anna Smashnova in the world ranking, who repatriated to Israel in 1990 from Minsk at the age of 15 and over the past years has made a worthy career.

Breakthrough

In the spring of 2006, Shahar Peer made a quantum leap forward. First, in May, she won the tournament in Prague, and two weeks later in the final of the prestigious tournament in Istanbul, she beat Russian Anastasia Myskina . After that, in Paris , at the French Open Tennis Championship , she reached the eighth finals, beating another strong Russian athlete Elena Dementieva .

Her next rival was Swiss Martina Hingis , one of the strongest tennis players in the world. This match in prime time was broadcast on the First Channel of Israeli television, which was the first such event. Peer caught up with Hingis and equalized, and the initiative was clearly on her side. But the match was interrupted due to darkness, and the next day, Hingis managed to get the better of the Israeli. After the match, the usually restrained Hingis stated: “This brave girl has a great future.”

Peak career

In 2007, Peer and Tzipi Obziler after winning the playoff match over the Austrian team led the Israeli team to the I World Group - the top division of the Federation Cup. In 2008, together with Victoria Azarenka, Peer made it to the finals of the Australian Open, where they lost to Ukrainians Alyona and Katerina Bondarenko 6: 2, 1: 6, 4: 6.

A year later, paired with Hisela Dulko , Peer lost to Azarenka and Vera Zvonareva in the final of the tournament in Indian Wells . In May 2009, a leg injury forced her to give up the fight in the semifinals of the tournament in Estoril ( Portugal ) and miss the French Open. In September, she won her first singles tournament in three years in Guangzhou ( PRC ), and immediately followed by another - the Tashkent Open Championship (both tournaments are from the WTA International category). These two victories and an increase in the ranking to 32 places allowed Peer to participate in the WTA International final tournament, the WTA champion competition , where she lost in the group to the future finalist Marion Bartoli .

Since the beginning of 2010, she only once visited the finals of the international tournament (in Hobart ), but three times reached the semi-finals of the prime tournaments (in Dubai , Stuttgart and Madrid ) and won five victories over rivals from the top ten ranking: in Dubai over Karolina Wozniacki and Li Na , in Stuttgart over Agnieszka Radwanská and Dinara Safina and in Madrid over Svetlana Kuznetsova . In the further part of the season, Peer twice reaches the fourth rounds of the Grand Slam tournaments (at Roland Garros and the US Open ) and ends the year with two semi-finals - in Beijing and Osaka . All this allows the Shahar to end the year at the record 13th line of the single player rating and even become a reserve at the Final tournament in Doha .

Among the paired achievements of that season, it is worth noting the finish of the spring dirt season - an Israeli (paired with Francesca Schiavone ) gets to the semi-finals at the tournament in Madrid and to the quarter-finals at Roland Garros ; later, Shahar (paired with Monica Niculescu ) makes it to the semi-finals of the Montreal tournament and is celebrated in the finals in Tokyo (paired with Peng Shuai from China). All these results allowed to end the year close to the best rating positions - according to the results of the 2010 season, Shahar was listed as the 24th racket of the world in doubles.

Retirement

Peer did not work out the 2011 season. She broke up with the coach ^[3] , only once in a season reached the finals at the WTA tournament ( Citi Open , where she was seeded first) and in early October announced the end of the season due to a stressful fracture of the spine ^[4] . Nevertheless, she completed the year among the 50 best tennis players in the world. The recession continued the next year - the best result was reaching the semifinals in Hobart at the very beginning of the season, and in ten tournaments (including two Grand Slam tournaments and the Olympic Games ) Peer left the fight in the first round. She finished the season after the U.S. Open due to hip strain.

In the summer of 2013, Peer reached the final of the base category tournament in Baku and won the WTA tournament in Suzhou , which belongs to the new lower category WTA 125K (taking the 113th place in the ranking, she was seeded third in this tournament). This allowed her to once again end the season in the first hundred of the rating, although during the year she lost nine times in the first round and seven more in qualifying tournaments. At the premier tournament in Brussels, Peer and Canadian Gabriela Dabrowski reached the finals in doubles, defeating two seeded couples along the way. In 2014, Peer played twice in the WTA tournament finals, both times Romanian Raluca Olaru , and at the beginning of the season, the Israeli woman, together with Sylvia Soler-Espinosa from Spain, became the quarter-finalist of the Australian Open after defeating those seeded under the second number of Xie Shuwei and Peng Shuai . In August 2014, she dropped out of the first hundred singles rating and did not return to her anymore ^[2] .

For the entire season of 2015, Peer managed to achieve a good result only in the ITF tournament in Istanbul; at WTA tournaments, she only managed to go beyond the first round only once. The season of 2016 ended for her already in February, and by the end of the year she dropped to seventh in the rating ^[5] . In February 2017, Shahar Peer, after 23 years in tennis and 13 seasons in the WTA tour, announced her retirement due to chronic inflammation of the shoulder ^{[2] [6]} .

As of April 27, 2015

In order to prevent confusion and doubling of accounts, the information in this table is adjusted only after the end of the participation of this player.

• Official Website (English) (Hebrew)

• WTA Website Profile
• Profile on ITF website
• Profile on the Federation Cup website