Arantxa Rus (Dutch) Biography

The 2008 Australian Open Junior Champion is going through the awkward transition of crossing the divide from junior to senior competition. However, after beating Kim Clijsters at the 2011 French Open things are looking very positive.

Before this memorable win Arantxa Rus the Dutch youngster and former World Number 1 Junior was not finding the transition an easy task. The same year she won the Junior Title she qualified for the Guangzhou International Women’s Open in China and beat Yanina Wickmayer in the first round and went on to beat Gisela Dulko to reach the quarter-final, then lost to Camille Pin of France.

2009 started badly for Arantxa when she failed to qualify for several tournaments including Moorilla Hobart International and the Australian Open.

Her game picked up with the start of the clay-court season and in Marbella, she won through to qualify for the main draw of the Andalucia Tennis Experience and won the first round before losing to 3rd seed Kaia Kanepi.

At the French Open at Roland Garros in Paris, she won through to the main draw, where she beat Olivia Sanchez in the first round before losing to Yaroslava Shvedova. By the end of the season, Rus had won 10 out of 11 matches and she ended 2009 with a win/loss record of 37/24.

In 2010 she again failed to qualify for Hobart or the Australian Open but playing in the US Open she reached the second round before losing to the 2010 Wimbledon Junior Champion Kristyna Pliskova, but 2011 has begun better for her.

She won through the qualifying rounds of the Brisbane International and won her first and second matches in the main draw before losing in the third round to Anna Tatishvili.

She also won the qualifying rounds at the 2011 Medibank International in Sydney and beat the Wimbledon Semi-Finalist Mirjana Lucic in the first round of the main draw. However, in the next round, she was beaten by the eventual Semi-Finalist Bojana Jovanovski in three sets.

She qualified for the Australian Open and caused an upset in the first round by knocking out Bethanie Mattek-Sands in three sets. She got no further as she came up against the two-time Grand Slam champion Svetlana Kuznetsova.

Her biggest career win came when she defeated former world number one Kim Clijsters at the 2011 French Open, Roland Garros.

Arantxa Rus was born on 13th December 1990 in Delft, South Holland and she lives with her parents and sister in Monster, the Netherlands. She began playing tennis at the age of 5-years-old and is coached by Hugo Akkar and Eddy Bank. She is currently working with the Dutch Tennis Federation and she has spent her playing life denying that she is named after tennis champion Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario, saying her mother just liked the name.

So far Arantxa Rus holds 7 ITF Senior Titles, 5 singles, and 2 doubles. The singles titles were won between 2007 and 2009 and the doubles titles came in 2007 in Mexico and on 11th February 2011 in Stockholm, partnering Anastasiya Yakimova.