Anastasija Sevastova

The tennis courts in Alt-Erlaa, Vienna in 2014: Anastasija Sevastova is giving tennis lessons. Adults, kids, everybody. She wants to finance her college course in tourism management in Krems. Back then, the girl from Latvia had already called her professional career a day.
2017: The grass center court at the Mallorca Open, a WTA tournament organized by Edwin Weindorfer (e|motion). Like one year before, Sevastova reaches the finals. Which shouldn’t be too surprising as the Latvian is No. 19 in the world. She goes on to win the final in three sets against Julia Görges from Germany, celebrating her second victory on the WTA tour. Her first WTA final was way back in May of 2010 in Oeiras, which she had also won.

What’s in between these two events is one of the craziest stories in professional sports. 2014 she meets Styrian Ronny Schmidt in her adopted home in Vienna. He’s also giving lessons in Alt Erlaa. They go out and become a couple. Then they decide to give it one more try. They gather all their savings to finance traveling to professional tournaments again. A decision that would pay off. August 2019: Ronny Schmidt is still Sevastova’s coach and partner. In the meantime, Anastasija has won three WTA tour titles (the third coming in July of 2018 in Bukarest), a prize-money of 6.5 million dollars and reached No. 11 in October of 2018.