He came to Mallorca when he was 13, to try out for a few days at Rafa Nadal’s academy. He loved the environment and training. But due to bureaucratic problems, she was not settled as a star student at this elite school until 2023. In her resume, … Junior titles at the Australian Open and Roland Garros in 2023, the Masters Cup and No. 1, at 15 years old. At 18 years old, Alina Korneva (Moscow, 2007) continues to climb the ladder to the clouds, learning at every step, from the hands of Anabel Medina and Joan Carles Alcala, and with Nadal’s attention to her circumstances, whether about what it means to manage patience in the face of injury, or several injuries, and the subsequent recovery, and what it means to manage success that predicts further successes.
She has been on fire on the WTA circuit for the last two seasons. In 2024 he won his first match in the final draw of a Grand Slam in Australia It reached number 128which is the highest so far. And in 2025, another level of progress.
At the beginning of October, she received another trophy to showcase and build as a player in Bratislava. A recent stretch saw him add fifteen wins in sixteen matches. A boost of energy to start 2026 with other goals. “She has a lot of personal ambition, and wants to be very good. For her age, she is a very mature player and very professional. He has discipline and routine.” Anabel Medina confirms.
She shared an office with Mira Andreeva, another precocious talent already among the elite, whom she beat in the final in Australia; Now share the tracks with Alexandra Ellais also in the process of settling into the major league circuit, but Korneeva doesn’t want to rush or compare herself to others. Because the Russian has traveled from a young age on this thorny path of desire and inability to endure mandatory rest periods due to injuries.
“She’s a 17-year-old girl, but… He looks like he’s 25 years old; “She is very tall and very developed, but inside she is still a girl, and she has very good circumstances, but she still has to do this,” Medina explains. Hence, it is somewhat “logical” that there is a mismatch between the requirements of the path and the object.
At the beginning of the year, his right wrist gave him so many problems that he left the slopes in February and underwent surgery in April: the unstable tendon that was still under construction had to be repaired. “He is He stopped for almost two years This will help her a lot in the future mentally, but for her it was a difficult process. For us, we try to explain to him that a tennis player’s career is very long, and that he will have a lot of time,” Medina says of this growth process at the table.
The emotional boost came with Nadal’s visit, which he immortalized on his networks and which he explains as follows: “I was wondering how everything was going, and I understood everything. I was sorry that I was so lucky, and I said to myself: “Yes, I know it is disappointing to be like this every day, but this is tennis and we have to get through it.”
For the tennis player herself, growing up without a racket was also a good thing: “I think I’ve matured; It gave me a lot of strength I worked hard to be patient; Sometimes I was fascinated by emotions. “I began to understand the values of tennis and life better,” he told this newspaper. Through periods of rest, measured, disciplined, and consciously lived progress is achieved. “I thought a lot about the goals I had when I was 25, but now I understand that I have to be more in the present: not in the past, not in the future.”
After a seven-month layoff, she made a remarkable return to the ring in September, unleashing her talent: she won her first match, a WTA 250 tournament in Monastir, and a week later, lifted the W100 Caldas da Rainha title. In October, W75 from Bratislava, with boarding at block 215. From here, whatever you want.