Anna Smashnova

Anna Smashnova was born in 1976 in Minsk

Smashnova was born in Minsk to a Russian-Jewish family. Her father Sasha is an engineer and her mother is Zina. She started playing tennis at age 6 and won the Soviet girls' youth championship in 1989.

Her family moved to Israel in September 1990 after Freddy Krivine, a founder of the Israel Tennis Centers, invited her. She trained at the Israel Tennis Centers and won the 1991 French Open girls' singles title. She graduated from American International High School near Tel Aviv in 1995 and completed her IDF service in 1997.

She won her first WTA singles title in Tashkent in 1999 and her second in Belgium in 2000. In 2002 she won 4 titles and beat players such as Justine Henin and Kim Clijsters. In December 2002 she married her coach Claudio Pistolesi, and they later divorced.

She competed at the 2004 Athens Olympics. She won 12 of her 13 WTA finals, and her winning streak in finals ended in 2006. She played 61 Fed Cup ties for Israel.

She retired after Wimbledon 2007. She then became a senior coach at the Israel Tennis Centers. In 2017 she received the ITF Fed Cup Commitment Award.