maggie maleeva retires!

[ILoveSilvia]

not really a shock!



Good luck Maggie

[mickrob]

Thats a shame I always love to watch Maggie Play she will be missed

[tall_one]

wtf is going on here? 3 people retiring this month?!

ah well, have a good retirement, Magdalena

[tall_one]

Eclipse of Venus leaves Maleeva in the shadows
From Neil Harman, Tennis Correspondent, in New York

SO IT is farewell to the sisters. Venus has joined Serena Williams on the US Open sidelines and for the Maleevas, arguably Bulgaria’s most famous sporting dynasty, the show has reached the end of the pier. Magdalena, the youngest of the three, who as a teenager was thought destined to be the best, has hung up her rackets, the destiny not quite fulfilled.

There was no fanfare of trumpets or outpouring of emotion as might attend the day that Venus and Serena strut off into Hollywood’s embrace. No one told Magdalena, “I’m really sorry to see you go”, as one soppy scribe did to Venus after the Wimbledon champion’s three-set, quarter-final defeat by Kim Clijsters yesterday.


Yet, after 16 years on the professional tour, she deserved more acclaim than a drink and a chat with three writers in one of the plush sky-boxes at Flushing Meadows.

None of the Maleevas, Manuela, Katerina and Magdalena — Maggie as she is known — won a grand-slam tournament, but the youngest missed only eight major championships of the 54 from the start of her career, a record of which she is justifiably proud.

In 1993, the Maleevas made grand-slam history when all three were seeded at the Australian Open and, also that year, became the first three sisters to make the fourth round of the French Open. At Wimbledon, they were ranked No 11 (Maggie), No 12 (Manuela) and No 13 (Katerina).

They rarely made headlines for what they did on the court and certainly not for what they said off it: they were notoriously suspicious of the media and worried what Yulia Berberian, their matriarchal mother, might say if they put a word out of place. The tears often flowed, to the extent that they were christened the “Boo-Hoo sisters”.

A sad element of Maleeva’s departure is her admission that she clung to her mother’s apron strings too long and, after so many years on the tour, can count the friendships she made in the sport on the fingers of one hand.

“I’m not going to be keeping in touch with a great many people in tennis,” she said. “I made great efforts to be friends with a few people but I guess I failed and I spent more time with them in recent years than I have with my family. It’s a pity there isn’t more spontaneity, either. Too many players are told what they should say and how they should say it.

“Too much of tennis these days is style ahead of substance. People pay attention to physical appearances and the players become celebrities. It’s not only in tennis, it’s in everything else. That’s the society we live in.”

Maleeva said that of the players not of her generation, she liked Clijsters the most. It is not difficult to see why. If a straw poll was conducted citing popularity as its basis, the 22-year-old from Belgium would give Lindsay Davenport a run.

Maleeva’s rule of thumb does not work with Clijsters, for here is a woman who has style, substance and now, a real serenity in her life. Rather than be known as the nicest person not to win a grand-slam championship, or the woman who decided that Lleyton Hewitt was not the man for her, she wants the fullest extent of professional acclaim and, to judge from her track record on hard courts in America this year, she will be the champion on the Open’s Super Saturday.

Of the six hard-court events she has played on this continent this year, Clijsters has won five, her single loss coming against Peng Shuai, of China, in the quarter-finals of the Acura Classic in San Diego in the first week of August. She ran Venus Williams into the ground yesterday, a performance that grew in brilliance as the match’s tempo increased.

“She likes to play really fast,” Williams said after her 4-6, 7-5, 6-1 defeat. “I like to take my time. But I’m an adult now, I’ve been through a lot of disappointment in my life but as long as I’m healthy and blessed, I’ll have opportunities to win other tournaments.”

[Lisa]

ahh, thats such a shame. Maggie was one of my favourite players on the womens tour too.

Hope she has a lovely retirement. All the best Maggie