Professional Career
Schiavone has won five singles titles on the WTA tour, but has also achieved ten runner-ups in total, eight of them since the autumn of 2005. Schiavone lost her first eight career finals before finally winning her first title in July 2007. She and her Italian teammates Mara Santangelo, Flavia Pennetta, and Roberta Vinci beat the Belgium team 3–2 in the 2006 Fed Cup final. Justine Henin had to retire in the fifth and final match due to an injury in her right knee, which let Italy win their first Fed Cup trophy. This match was a doubles match and Kirsten Flipkens partnered Henin and Roberta Vinci partnered Schiavone. In 2009 she won the Fed Cup with Italy for the second time against the USA, and also made the quarterfinals of Wimbledon for the first time. In 2010 Italy with Schiavone won the Fed Cup for the third time.
In addition, she realized a notable victory during the quarterfinals of the 2008 Dubai Duty Free Women's Open, when she upset World No. 1 and four-time champion Henin 7–6, 7–6. She also beat Amélie Mauresmo in a Fed Cup tie in 2006 when Mauresmo was ranked No. 1.
Partnering with Australian Casey Dellacqua, Schiavone was the runner-up in the women's doubles competition at the 2008 French Open.
Read more about this topic: Francesca Schiavone
Famous quotes containing the words professional and/or career:
“The professional celebrity, male and female, is the crowning result of the star system of a society that makes a fetish of competition. In America, this system is carried to the point where a man who can knock a small white ball into a series of holes in the ground with more efficiency than anyone else thereby gains social access to the President of the United States.”
—C. Wright Mills (1916–1962)
“I’ve been in the twilight of my career longer than most people have had their career.”
—Martina Navratilova (b. 1956)