Manuela Maleeva Fragniere

Manuela Maleeva Fragniere

Manuela Maleeva was 17 when she walked onto the clay in Rome in 1984 and beat a five-time champion, Chris Evert, 6-3, 6-3, for the Italian Open title. It was her breakthrough into the top 10, and within a year she had climbed to a career-high No. 3 in February 1985, behind only Evert and Martina Navratilova. She held a place in the year-end top 10 for nine straight seasons, through 1992, built on the same patient baseline game that had unsettled Evert in Rome.

She was the eldest of the three Maleeva sisters, all coached by their mother Yulia Berberian, a former Bulgarian champion herself, and the trio became known on tour as the Unmaleevable sisters. Manuela reached US Open semifinals in 1992 and 1993 and, in 1988, won singles bronze at the Seoul Olympics, still Bulgaria's only tennis medal at the Games. Later a Swiss citizen who added Fragniere to her name, she closed out 19 career titles in a career that outlasted most of the rivals she had once startled.