Nina Teplyakova

Nina Sergeevna Teplyakova (; November 10, 1904 – July 22, 1983) was a Soviet dancer, tennis player, and tennis coach. She was honored as a Merited Master of Sport and Merited Coach of the USSR (1956), and was awarded the Order of the Badge of Honor (July 22, 1937). She was a nine-time USSR champion, and as a coach, she trained about 20 Masters of Sport of the USSR, including Anna Dmitrieva, Olga Morozova, and Olga Zaitseva.

Biography Nina Teplyakova, the daughter of an accountant, was introduced to tennis by Nikolai Nikolaevich Ivanov, a leading Soviet tennis player. Ivanov began courting the girl, who dreamed of a ballet career, in the resort village of Mamontovka near Moscow and persuaded her to take up tennis. In 1922, at the age of 18, she first stepped onto the court at the Moscow Tennis Championship, losing decisively in singles to Sofia Maltseva, and then also in mixed doubles with Ivanov. However, her coach, who later became Teplyakova's husband, managed to motivate her to pursue a tennis career. In 1926, at the match-tournament for the best female tennis players of the USSR, held that year instead of the All-Union Championship, Teplyakova defeated both Maltseva and the reigning champion Elena Alexandrova. This success was considered sensational, but the following year Teplyakova won all the domestic tournaments she participated in and topped the newly introduced USSR ranking of the top ten female tennis players. That same year, she also won the World Labor Spartakiad in Berlin.

In the 1930s, having already graduated from the evening ballet school of the Bolshoi Theater and performing as a dancer in the musical revue with the ensemble of Kasyan Goleizovsky's "30 Girls," Teplyakova continued to be a leader in Soviet women's tennis. After missing the 1932 season due to illness, she won the USSR Championship in singles six times in a row—a record that remains unbeaten among women to this day—and topped the All-Union women's ranking nine times (the last time in 1939). It wasn't until 1940 that she lost the title of USSR champion and the top spot in the ranking to Galina Korovina. Teplyakova's playing style was not aggressively attacking; she preferred to play from the baseline. However, she was noted for her speed around the court (she would "run around" each ball from the right

Coaching career After her retirement from playing, Nina Teplyakova became a coach, as she had planned. Among her first trainees was Elizaveta Chuvirina, who, at the age of 33, had reached the level of a first-category player.

Nina Teplyakova died in the summer of 1983 from a serious illness. In 2003, her name was included in the lists of the Russian Tennis Hall of Fame.

Achievements

Seven-time USSR singles champion and two-time doubles champion Winner of the World Labor Spartakiad (Berlin, 1927) in singles and doubles First RSFSR tennis champion (1927) Multiple-time Moscow champion in all categories, three-time absolute Moscow champion Coach of about 20 Masters of Sport of the USSR, including Elizaveta Chuvirina, Anna Dmitrieva, and Olga Morozova