About Anett

I started training at 6 years old under the supervision of my mother Ülle Milk and 3 years later on the my second year of competing I won my first title. In the finals of the Estonian Youth Championship (T-10) I defeated in the 2.5 hour and 3 set match my then biggest rival at home Mari Kalma 4:6;6:4;6:2. It was year 2004 and as an active girl from Püünsi school, I had in addition to tennis divided my time between choir practice and folk dance. Finally the time had come when the dance practice was paid by the performance at the 17th Dance Celebration in Estonia – a real Estonian has to participate in the dance or song celebration festival at least once a life. Step by step the extra activities started to fade to the background and the who attention concentrated on tennis.

In 2005 I started with the international tournaments. The most memorable of them was the LJSC tournament victory in Riga, Latvia. This was followed by the success of winning the tournaments in Helsinki and Kedainia. I also won a gold medal in the Estonian youth singles.

While playing in the T-12 Estonian GP finals fate let me see a rare but sad occasion. I had performed a back hand strike, when a little sparrow crossed the ball’s trajectory, was hit by the ball and was left lying on the court. The point was still played until the end.

Years filled with hard training and tournaments followed. All the hard work started to pay off in 2008. There were 2 first places in the T-14 tournament doubles in the Kreml cup in Moscow. An important milestone was winning the Estonian women’s championship in 2009, when I was 13 years old. There has never been anyone in Estonia that young to win the adult championship in singles. A year later I was able to defend my title.

My breaking point came in year 2011, when I started a systematic play in the ITF women’s tournaments. I won 3 ITF 10 000 USD tournaments. At the same time the games in the ITF junior league continued. One of the important achievements was the victory at the unofficial championship in Orange Bowle in USA and from there being in the French Open quarter finals. The year 2012 marks reaching the first ever WTA tournament (220 000 USD Kopenhagen, wild card qualification), where one win was missing from the main tournament. The places in the Junior Grand Slams also became better. At the French Open and Wimbledon I was able to get to the semifinals and in the US Open to the finals.

The wins inspire me to reach new goals. I have experienced that even from the negative results I can always come out as a winner. Just as I was able to come out of a losing streak in Kremlin Cup doubles in Moscow in 2008. We were in the supertiebreakers decisive set 4:9 behind, which gave the opponent 6 match balls, but finally we were still able to win 11-9.