Tamira Paszek

Good Things Come in Small Packages

March 31, 2008

She may stand a mere 5’5” tall, but Tamira Paszek has put every inch of her tiny frame to great use in order to become a hot commodity on the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour.

The 17-year old native of Dornbirn, Austria finds herself in a class all her own. She was the youngest player to finish last season in the Top 280 of the year-end rankings at no. 42, a meteoric rise from the no. 101 spot she held at the end of 2006.

Paszek’s 2007 campaign was definitely a memorable one as she made a grand entrance at all four Grand Slam events, reaching the Round of 16 at Wimbledon and the U.S. Open. En route to these milestone showings, Paszek defeated the likes of Elena Dementieva, Tatiana Golovin and Patty Schnyder- players who are firmly amongst the world’s Top 20. By season’s end she had compiled an impressive 33-18 win-loss record and collected just over $300,000 in prize money. In addition, Paszek helped Austria upend Australia for the chance to contend a World Group I playoff in Fed Cup and also made her Rogers Cup debut in Toronto.

Paszek also served notice in 2006 when she captured her first career Tour title, as a qualifier no less, at a Tier IV tournament in Portoroz, Slovenia, becoming the seventh youngest singles champion in Tour history at 15 years, 9 months and 18 days. While she was solidifying her status amongst the pros, Paszek was also closing the books on a stand out junior career. She did so in rather grandiose fashion by advancing to the U.S Open final, her second junior Grand Slam championship bout after first accomplishing the feat at Wimbledon in 2005.

It has been more of the same for Paszek since the beginning of 2008. Armed with the ability to pound the ball off both wings with the best of them, she was a semifinalist at Auckland in January falling to eventual champion Lindsay Davenport and gave World No. 3 Jelena Jankovic all she could handle in the opening round of the Australian Open. In the end, it was Jankovic who came out on top in the spirited tussle, winning 12-10 in a third-set tiebreak in what could easily be considered the match of the tournament.

Paszek is currently training under the expert tutelage of Larri Passos, best known as the former coach of three-time French Open champion Gustavo Kuerten. Is it any wonder that Pazek’s favourite place to visit is Brazil? Her father was born in Tanzania, but spent a good part of his life living in Canada and it was Paszek’s mother who introduced her daughter to tennis at age four.

Tennis fans can only hope that Paszek’s remarkable success as a teenager is a sign of things to come not only for the remainder of this season, but also for what promises to be a long, decorated career. Regardless of what the future holds, Paszek has certainly gotten herself started off on the right foot.