Yulia Putintseva is a Russian-born Kazakhstani professional tennis player who was born on January 7, 1995, in Moscow, Russia. After being inspired to take up the sport thanks to her father, she quickly joined a local club in Moscow before eventually moving to the Mouratoglou Academy in Paris aged 14.
After a junior career filled with success, including a number 3 in the world ranking and a couple of Grand Slam final appearances, she was keen to make her name heard on the main WTA Tour. Turning pro at the tender age of 14, she had to wait just a year before making her main draw WTA debut at the Luxembourg Open in 2010, where she eventually lost to Angelique Kerber.
Using the next few years of her career to steadily climb up the rankings, Putintseva was starting to go deeper in WTA events, including a few quarterfinals in the 2014 season. This progress was backed up on one of the sport’s biggest stages when she reached the quarterfinal of the French Open in 2016.
Not wanting to make that result a flash in the pan, she got her head stuck into the grind and started seeing even better results on the more everyday WTA events. Reaching her first final in early 2017 set her up nicely to achieve her career-high singles ranking of world number 27 in that same season.
In 2019, all the Kazakhstani’s work started to pay off, with her winning her first WTA title in May at the Nuremberg Open, defeating Tamara Zidansek in the final. The career-firsts did not stop there either, with her reaching her first US Open quarterfinal the following season, albeit having no fans to celebrate in front of due to COVID-19 restrictions.
One year later, she claimed her second career WTA title at the Budapest Grand Prix on her favorite surface clay, beating Anhelina Kalinina in the final.
