Karen Khachanov Russian Tennis Player From Moscow

Early life

Karen Abgarovich Khachanov was born on 21 May 1996 in Moscow. He began playing tennis in a kindergarten group at the age of three, where his parents had enrolled him, and decided at twelve to turn professional. His father, Abgar, has roots in Yerevan, Armenia, and played volleyball before studying medicine, and his mother, Nataliya, also trained in medicine. After he turned fifteen he moved to Split, Croatia, to train under Vedran Martic, and later he worked in Barcelona with the coach Galo Blanco.

Career

As a junior, Khachanov won the Under-18 European Championship in July 2013. In 2014 he took silver in doubles at the Summer Youth Olympics with Andrey Rublev. Later that year he made his Davis Cup debut for Russia as the youngest Russian to play in the competition at that time, 17 years and 157 days old, and he won his first Challenger title in Istanbul in 2015.

His first ATP Tour title came in October 2016 at the Chengdu Open, where he beat Albert Ramos Vinolas in the final. That event made him the first Russian to reach an ATP final since Mikhail Youzhny in 2013. In 2017 he reached the fourth round of the French Open for the first time, and in 2018 he won two further titles: Open 13 in Marseille and the Kremlin Cup in Moscow. He ended 2018 by winning the Paris Masters, defeating Novak Djokovic in the final. He was the fifth Russian man to win a Masters title, and the first since Nikolay Davydenko in 2009.

In 2019 he reached his first major quarterfinal at the French Open, beating Juan Martin del Potro in the fourth round on the way, and on 15 July 2019 he rose to a career-high singles ranking of world number 8. In the summer of 2021 he reached the quarterfinals at Wimbledon, where he lost in five sets to Denis Shapovalov, and at the Tokyo Olympics he won the silver medal in singles, losing the gold medal match to Alexander Zverev.

At the 2022 US Open he reached the semifinals of a Grand Slam tournament for the first time, with a five-set win over Nick Kyrgios in the quarterfinals, before losing to Casper Ruud. He repeated a major semifinal at the 2023 Australian Open, and later in 2023 won the doubles title at the Madrid Open with Rublev. In October 2023 he won the Zhuhai Championships, his first singles title in five years. In 2024 he won the Qatar Open in February and the Almaty Open in October, which brought his tally to seven ATP Tour singles titles; he was also runner-up at the Vienna event that month. In 2025 he reached the Wimbledon quarterfinals again and was runner-up at the National Bank Open in Canada, losing the final to Ben Shelton.

Recognition

In 2021, following the Tokyo Olympics, Khachanov was awarded the sports title Honoured Master of Sports of Russia and received the Medal of the Order "For Merit to the Fatherland", 1st class. He had previously been named Junior of the Year in 2013 and Male Player of the Year in 2018 in the Russian Cup awards, and was part of the team honoured as Team of the Year in 2019 and 2021. His highest-profile results include the 2018 Paris Masters title and the Olympic silver medal.

Personal life

Khachanov married Veronika Shkliaeva, whom he had been dating since 2011, in April 2016. The couple have two sons, born in 2019 and 2023. His brother-in-law is the tennis player Ilya Ivashka, as their wives are twin sisters.