WITH no live tennis on currently due to the COVID-19 global pandemic, Draft Central will take a look back at some of the best players of past and present and rank them based on a specific set of guidelines. In our next Top 10 countdown, we look at the Top 10 WTA Players to never have won a Grand Slam title, and in at second is a Russian whose career had to end suddenly due to injuries.

#2 Dinara Safina (533 matches – 67.5% winning record, 12 career titles, #1 career-high ranking)

After delving into the golden era of women’s tennis during the 1970s and 80s for a few players in this countdown, we fast forward to the 20th century when a young Russian turned professional at the age of 14. Her older brother was already making waves as one of the best players on tour, so it was natural that Dinara Safina would automatically start racking up the Grand Slam titles eventually. Except she did not. She reached three finals and two semis – all within two years – and was gone again before you knew it.

The sister of world number one and Grand Slam champion Marat Safin had a lot to live up to on the women’s circuit, but her career seemed to always have a runner-up feel to it, not just in her family. She won 12 career titles in a short 533-match career where she had a superb 67.5 per cent winning record. The Russian talent did win a Grand Slam doubles title at Flushing Meadows in 2007, but could never reach those achievements on the singles tour.

Her career started in the new millenium as she played just a couple of careers on the ITF tour, winning her first ITF title the following year in 2001. It was 2002 when her career began to take off, reaching the top 100 and winning her debut title at Sopot, then winning her first Grand Slam match at the US Open. A year later she won another title at Palermo, and reached the fourth round at Flushing Meadows which was the only major she had won a main draw match.

She would not reach a final eight in a major until the 2006 French Open, but before then had gradually made her way up the rankings, reaching the top 50 in 2004, then winning two titles in 2005 – including a big win at Paris Indoors against Amelie Mauresmo which thrust her into the spotlight – which saw her reach the top 20. Still a teenager, Safina won the crucial Fed Cup doubles tie with Elena Dementieva against Mauresmo and Mary Pierce to take out the Fed Cup title.

Safina’s next singles title would not come until 2007 having consolidated herself in the Top 20, and accounted for Martina Hingis in the final at Gold Coast that year. She was on the verge of cracking into the top handful of players, and then came her golden two-year span of 2008-09 which propelled her into this list.

Safina won the lead-up title to Roland Garros in Berlin, defeating world number one, Justin Henin as well as the likes of Serena Williams, Victoria Azarenka and Elena Dementieva on her way to the German title. A couple of weeks later in France, she defeated three consecutive top 10 players in Maria Sharapova, Dementieva and Svetlana Kuznetsova – fellow Russians – before falling to Ana Ivanovic in the Roland Garros final.

Another final appearance in the Netherlands a week later ended in a loss to Tamarine Tanasugarn, but Safina would bounce back with titles at the LA Ope and Rogers Cup in July. She narrowly missed out on a Gold Medal at Beijing, falling to Dementieva after being up a set. That was followed by a US Open final – losing to Williams – and a win in the Pan Pacific Open. She qualified for the Sony Ericsson Championships as the world number two, but disappointingly dropped her three group matches in straight sets to Dementieva and the Williams sisters.

The disappointing WTA Finals result put extra fire in the belly as she reached back-to-back finals in Sydney and then at the Australian Open, going down to Dementieva and Williams again respectively. A couple of months later she made back-to-back finals on the clay in Germany and Italy, going down to Kuznetsova in the former, before turning the tables on her Russian counterpart in Italy.

But the German tournament marked the first time Safina had reached world number one, becoming the first brother-sister duo with Safin to both reach respective world number one. Her run of finals continued after her Italy triumph, winning the Madrid Open against Caroline Wozniacki before racing to the Roland Garros final as the number one seed, but again falling to Kuznetsova.

A semi-finals appearance at Wimbledon with a loss to Williams was countered by a win in Slovenia before one more final in the Western and Southern Open. She qualified for the Sony Ericsson Championships ranked first, but had to retire just two games into the tournament citing a pesky back injury that had plagued the second half of her year.

Little did fans know, that would be the last of Safina’s best tennis as constant injuries drew her career to a standstill, falling outside the top 20 the following year and top 100 in 2011. She reached a couple of quarter finals in that year, but her last WTA Tour match would come at Madrid where she lost in the second round in May.

Her retirement was just as strange as her brief career, with brother Marat announcing it rather than Safina herself. She later used Twitter to say nothing was confirmed and would apply for wildcard entries in 2012, but she did not play another game. While officially retiring in 2014, Safina played her last match at age 25. It is fair to say, she almost certainly would have been a Grand Slam winner had it not been for injuries. She reached three Grand Slam finals in her time and came agonisingly close to snagging a couple of major titles.

—

Top 10 WTA Players without a Grand Slam title:

#10 Manuela Maleeva (Bulgaria/Switzerland)
#9 Zina Garrison (USA)
#8 Jelena Jankovic (Serbia)
#7 Elena Dementieva (Russia)
#6 Agnieszka Radwanska (Poland)
#5 Mary Joe Fernandez (USA)
#4 Wendy Turnbull (Australia)
#3 Pam Shriver (USA)
#2 Dinara Safina (Russia)