Hanika, Sylvia

Sylvia Hanika, daughter of a Bavarian builder, started playing tennis late - at the age of 12 - but quickly established herself as a potential star in German tennis. When Sylvia was 15 years old, then- German national team coach Richard Schönbronn called her “talent born once a century” ^[2] .

In 1978 , at the age of 18, Hanika made her way to the finals of international tournaments several times under the auspices of the Women's Tennis Association , including the Open Championships in Sweden and Austria . In the autumn of the same year, she made her debut in the German national team in the Federation Cup in 1978 , on the eve of her 19th birthday, and brought the team three points out of four possible in matches with rivals from Brazil and the UK . In 1979, she already became a quarter-finalist of the US Open , beating the sixth racket of the tournament Dianna Fromholtz and losing only to the future champion seeded under the third number - Tracy Austin ^[3] .

In early 1981, in Seattle, Chanica won her first Virginia Slims Tournament, and later at the French Open , seeded at number six, she reached the final after defeating the second and third rackets of the tournament, Navratilova and Jaeger . In the final, she lost to the fourth seeded Gana Mandlikova ^[4] . Until the end of the year, Hanika again made it to the quarter finals at the US Open, and in March of the following year she won the biggest victory in her career, winning the Virginia Slims Tour Championship . In the semi-finals of the championship, she defeated the Australian Wendy Turnbull , and in the finals - Navratilova, having managed to recoup with a score of 6-1, 3-1 in favor of her opponent ^[5] . After that, until the end of the season, she did not achieve major successes, but in 1983, after five consecutively lost finals (including two defeats against Navratilova and one from Turnbull), the semi-finals of the championship of the round and the quarter-finals of the US Open, she managed to climb to fifth - the highest in career - a position in the WTA ranking. Soon after, she also reached the quarter-finals of the Australian Open , gaining fifth place in the ranking until the end of the season.

Hanika's further successes were hindered by injuries that often disabled her in the second half of the 1980s, although in 1987 she still ranked 14th in the ranking ^[2] . In late 1991, after undergoing treatment in California, Hanika announced the end of her playing career: according to the athlete’s own admission, the untreated bursitis of the elbow joint (known as the “tennis elbow”) allowed her to train no longer than two days in a row, after which the pain returned ^{[ 6]} . Over the years of performances, she earned about half a million dollars, winning four titles in singles and one in doubles and losing 20 finals. Of the total prize money of 100 thousand dollars, it is necessary to win the 1982 final championship. Despite individual successes, Chanika was not a regular player of the German national team because of her unsociable nature ^[2] , but nevertheless held 28 meetings for the national team, winning 17 of them (including ten singles).

According to the national team coach Klaus Hofzass, Hanik, who for several years was the leader of the German women's tennis (including the champion of Germany in 1979 on the open courts ^[7] and 1978 on the premises ^[8] ), did a lot for its popularization in the country ^[6] . Angela Beru, author of a biography of Hanika in a book dedicated to the centenary of German tennis, writes that Sylvia “paved the way for the Count generation” ^[2] .

Singles

Doubles

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