Varvara Gracheva

Varvara Andreyevna Gracheva (Варвара Андреевна Грачёва; born 2 August 2000) is a Russian-born French professional tennis player.

Gracheva has a career-high WTA singles ranking of No. 39, achieved on 8 January 2024.

She has won seven singles titles on the ITF Circuit.

She followed it up with an upset over 118th-ranked Nao Hibino at the $80k Open de Cagnes-sur-Mer.

Gracheva went on to win two $25k titles, the first in Caserta, Italy, and second at the Open Montpellier Méditerranée Métropole Hérault.

With her ranking qualifying her for some WTA tournaments, she made her debut on the WTA Tour at the Ladies Open Lausanne, where she qualified for the main draw by defeating Julia Grabher in the final round, losing just two games.

She lost to Han Xinyun in the first round, in straight sets.

Gracheva then competed on hardcourts for the first time since April at the Washington Open, where she qualified for the main draw once again.

This time, she earned her first main draw win over Anna Blinkova in three sets, for her first top 100 win, and then fell to world No. 31, Hsieh Su-wei, in a final-set tiebreak.

Nonetheless, she secured herself a top 200 debut.

Competing in a Grand Slam championship for the first time in her career, she advanced to the final qualifying round of the US Open after defeating Martina Trevisan and Danka Kovinić, in straight sets.

She was defeated in the final round by Richèl Hogenkamp, in two tight sets.

Gracheva then returned onto clay, starting a 14-match winning streak with two consecutive titles at $60k events, the Open de Saint-Malo and the Open de Valencia.

In Saint-Malo, she earned top 100 wins over Aliona Bolsova (who reached the fourth round at Roland Garros) and Natalia Vikhlyantseva before defeating Marta Kostyuk in the final.

In Valencia, she dropped just 22 games all week and beat Tamara Korpatsch to win her second consecutive title.

She reached a career-high ranking of 121 after the tournament.

Playing at her home tournament, the Kremlin Cup, for the first time in her career, she qualified for the main draw and beat Ajla Tomljanović to reach the second round.

She led Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova by a set and a break, but could not hold onto her lead as she fell in three sets.

She ended the year with a 70–26 record, ending the year as the world No. 105 despite starting the year as No. 447, and was labelled as one of the biggest rising stars.

Gracheva reached the final round of qualifying at the Australian Open with wins over Chloé Paquet and Olga Danilović, but fell at the final hurdle to former world No. 45, Johanna Larsson.

First, she continued her training in Germany with Nina Bratchikova before moving to Cannes on the French Riviera in 2016.

She trains there with Gérard Solvès then Xavier Pujo at Jean-René Lisnard's Elite Tennis Center.

Having lived in France for more than five years, she applied for French naturalization in early March 2023, a request which was accepted in May 2023.

She obtained French nationality in June 2023, and was approved to start representing France after receiving her passport.

Gracheva began representing France in international competition at the 2023 Bad Homburg Open.

Gracheva reached a career-high ranking of 19 in her junior career, winning four Grade-2 events.

Gracheva played her first professional events in 2017, starting off unranked but managed to reach a ranking of No. 647 by the end of the year, after reaching three consecutive $15k tournaments in Hammamet, Tunisia, defeating the likes of Fiona Ferro in the process.

After defeating Sofia Shapatava to win a $15k tournament in Antalya, Turkey to begin her 2018 season, Gracheva returned to playing her final junior tournaments and did not compete on the ITF Circuit for six months.

Nonetheless, she was able to reach her first $25k quarterfinal in Périgueux and made her top 500 debut in July as a result.

Gracheva had three top 300 wins, including one over Maryna Zanevska in the qualifying rounds of the Al Habtoor Tennis Challenge.

She ended the year with a 28–13 winning record on the professional tour, as the world No. 447.

Despite a sluggish start to the year which saw Gracheva reach just one quarterfinal on hard courts, she achieved good results on clay.

Coming through the qualifying rounds at a $25k event in Chiasso, she won the biggest title of her career and entered the top 400 for the first time in her career.

Gracheva made her main-draw debut on the WTA Tour at the 2019 Ladies Open Lausanne, where she qualified by defeating Julia Grabher in the final round.

In July 2019, she qualified for the Washington Open and won her first WTA Tour main-draw match, defeating Anna Blinkova.

Varvara Gracheva was introduced to tennis by her mother Natalia Kazakova, who coached her until she was 14 years old near Zhukovsky.

Because of facilities limitations, she looked abroad to benefit from better conditions, before entering the junior circuit.

It was the beginning of a five-match losing streak for the Russian before the COVID-19 pandemic halted the 2020 WTA Tour.

Nonetheless, she was able to make her top 100 debut on March 2, 2020, just in time before the suspension of the tournaments.

She was part of the first WTA tournament of the tour's resumption, the Palermo Ladies Open, as the top seed in qualifying.