Anne Miller began playing tennis at the age of 5 and came up through the USTA player development program as a teenager. She turned pro on New Year's Day in 1995 and continued to make steady progress on the WTA Tour. By the end of 1996, she had already won more than 100 singles matches, including victories over Top 10 players Lindsay Davenport and Kimiko Date. However, I never saw her play until the summer of 1997.
My first "Anne Miller experience" was at the du Maurier Open in Toronto. I attended her first round match against Elena Likhovtseva and was immediately impressed, as much by Annie's powerful groundstrokes and striking beauty as by her on-court personality. Back then, Anne was prone to becoming very negative on the court -- screaming, kicking her racket, making sarcastic comments about her play, etc. I'm always drawn to players like that, who wear their hearts on their sleeves and look every bit as frustrated by the sport of tennis as we recreational hackers are. It's not always the most healthy attitude, though, and it was widely believed to be one of the factors holding Annie back.
The next time I saw Miller play, more than a year later at the 1998 US Open, she was a changed person. As she rolled through a dominant first round win over qualifier Sandra Nacuk, there were no outbursts, no pouting, no racket abuse. Anne was playing very well and actually doing it with a smile on her face. As much as I liked "the old Annie," this new incarnation was even more appealing. Miller reached the third round of that tournament and gave a very commendable account of herself in an Arthur Ashe Stadium loss to one of her tennis idols, Monica Seles. It was a match of high quality and good spirits, with Anne and Monica even engaging in a little discussion about fashion before shaking the umpire's hand. The future seemed to be boundless for Anne Miller, a very talented young player who now had a positive attitude and an entire crop of new fans.
Little did most viewers know that would be Annie's final match of the year. Earlier that summer, she'd decided to enroll at the University of Michigan, where she began taking classes before the '98 US Open was even over. Without the lucrative contracts a superstar player can rely on, Miller was making relatively little money on the Tour. More importantly, she didn't find her career all that personally fulfilling. The life of a professional tennis player can be a lonely struggle and Anne simply wasn't having much fun. While she never officially swore off a return to the game she loves, Annie was serious about starting a new life for herself on the Ann Arbor campus.
Anne stood by her word, spending an entire year at Michigan. However, she opted to give tennis another go, using a protected injury ranking to gain entry into the 1999 US Open. Annie played a rather scratchy first round match against Amy Frazier, losing in three sets. She had fun, though, and dropped some hints after the match about possibly making a full-time return to the WTA Tour when the 2000 season begins. She can use the injury ranking to enter seven more tournaments, which hopefully will give her enough time to shake off the rust and become the Top 40 player she was when she departed in '98. Whether she wins or loses is somewhat beside the point, though. What matters is that Anne Miller has learned to enjoy the experience...hence the name of this web page.
I hope this site will be a fitting tribute to Annie and a valuable resource for her fans. I've really enjoyed watching her play and would love to see her make a full-fledged comeback, but I wish her all the best in whatever she chooses to do with her life.