Stefanos Tsitsipas — tennis with roots in the USSR
Stefanos Tsitsipas was born in Athens on 12 August 1998, the eldest of four children of Apostolos Tsitsipas, a Greek tennis coach from Karditsa, and Julia Apostoli, née Salnikova. His connection to the Soviet Union runs through his mother.
Julia Salnikova was born in Moscow on 13 August 1964. She was the junior world No. 1 and played for the USSR from 1980, reaching No. 194 in the women's rankings. Her father, Sergei Salnikov, had won Olympic football gold with the Soviet team at Melbourne in 1956 and later managed Spartak Moscow. She met Apostolos at a WTA tournament in Athens, where she was playing and he was officiating, and from 1990 she represented Greece. She was her son's first coach; his father later gave up his job to travel with him and became his coach, while an aunt sponsored his junior career. Tsitsipas speaks Greek, Russian and English.
He began playing at three. In 2018 he won the Next Gen ATP Finals, and in January 2019, at twenty, he beat Roger Federer in the fourth round of the Australian Open and went on to become the first Greek player to reach a Grand Slam semi-final, where he lost to Rafael Nadal. By then he had beaten Novak Djokovic, Federer and Nadal, all before turning twenty-one, and in November 2019 he won the ATP Finals, the youngest champion since Lleyton Hewitt in 2001.
In 2021 he won the Monte Carlo Masters, the first of three titles there (2021, 2022, 2024), reached his first Grand Slam final at the French Open, where he lost to Djokovic, and in August rose to No. 3 in the world, the highest ranking ever held by a Greek player. He finished five consecutive seasons, 2019 to 2023, in the top ten: sixth in 2019, 2020 and 2023, and fourth in 2021 and 2022. In 2023 he reached a second major final, at the Australian Open, again losing to Djokovic. He represented Greece at the Olympic Games in Tokyo and Paris, the country his mother had played for since 1990, and in 2025 won his first ATP 500 title, in Dubai, at the twelfth attempt.
"His mother, Julia Salnikova, born in Moscow in 1964, played for the USSR from 1980 and for Greece from 1990, after meeting his father at a WTA tournament in Athens."
Migration storyTracing the roots — Moscow (Russia) — mother, born 1964
His mother, Julia Salnikova, was born in Moscow in 1964, was a junior world No. 1 and played for the USSR before settling in Greece; her father, Sergei Salnikov, won Olympic football gold for the USSR in 1956. Tsitsipas speaks Greek, Russian and English.
Moscow (Russia) — mother, born 1964. At the time, this region was one of the fifteen republics of the Soviet Union.