Claire Curran

The clubhouse where she learned to play tennis in Belfast had been destroyed by a terrorist bomb in the 1970s and she herself was frequently inconvenienced on her travels between Belfast and Dublin by bombs scares.

In Dublin, she spent her teenage years under the Irish national coaching programme of Matt Doyle.

Claire Curran (born 10 March 1978) is a former professional tennis player from Northern Ireland.

She represented both Great Britain and Ireland in the Fed Cup during her career.

Curran is the youngest ever Irish Fed Cup player (15 years 65 days) and before attending UC Berkeley was largely focussed on singles, with the highest singles win percentage of any Irish Fed Cup player.

At UC Berkeley, Curran was an Academic All-American (Majoring in Political Science) and won the NCAA Championship.

Serious injury resulted in her decision to focus on doubles post university.

She attained a singles ranking inside the top 100 and in 1993 became the youngest person to have represented Ireland in the Fed Cup, at the age of 15 years and 3 months.

Claire played her first adult match playing doubles for Ireland in the 1993 Fed Cup where she won her two doubles rubbers against competitors from Norway and Israel.

She played no other adult events this year.

In 1994 she again competed in the Fed Cup for Ireland in doubles when she and Lesley O'Halloran were defeated by doubles teams from Slovakia and Zimbabwe.

This was again the only adult event Claire played this year.

One year later she again competed in the Fed Cup for Ireland.

She played a more prominent role this year however by competing in both singles and doubles, winning singles matches against players from Malta, Kenya and Cyprus and also winning two doubles rubbers partnering Lesley O'Halloran.

Claire played no other adult events this year.

Curran travelled on the Junior Circuit, playing at junior Wimbledon in 1996.

In 1996 she was not involved in doubles in the Fed Cup but she did win singles rubbers against Malta and Iceland as well as losing one to Ukraine.

In 1997, Claire competed in only one event.

This was the $25k tournament held in Dublin where she was beaten in the first round of the singles and the doubles.

This was again the only ITF event Curran participated in during 1998 and she again experienced first round losses in the singles and doubles competitions.

The One ITF event Curran entered in 1999 was a $10k event in Hilton Head where she won four matches in the qualifying competition before losing just one match short of qualification.

She went one step further in the doubles however when she and Esther Knox qualified before losing in round one.

Curran reached a career-high doubles ranking of world No. 89, and won a total of 12 ITF titles over the course of her career and was a finalist in one WTA Tour event and was the key doubles players in the Great British Fed Cup teams of the mid 2000s.

Her overall Fed Cup record has the highest win percentage of any British or Irish player who has played in over 25 matches.

In 2000, Curran teamed up with Australian Amy Jensen to reach the semifinals of a $10k event in Harrisonburg, Virginia.

The duo then received a wild card into the doubles competition in the US Open where they drew the formidable pairing of Martina Hingis and Mary Pierce in the first round.

They gave the seeded pair a scare by taking the first set 6–4 however Hingis and Pierce came back strong to take the match, 4–6, 6–0, 6–1.

She did not compete on the ITF or WTA Tour again this season.

Curran began 2001 with Teryn Ashley as her regular partner and with her she reached the semifinals of a $10k in El Paso as qualifiers.

They followed this success up with a tournament win in another $10k event in Lake Ozark, Texas, a run to the semifinals of Mount Pleasant ($25k) and another run to the quarterfinals in Los Gatos, California ($50k).

July saw Curran team with Kristen van Elden from Australia to reach the semifinals of Frinton ($10k) before again joining with Ashley to reach the quarterfinals of a $10k event in Bath before having to retire from the tournament.

Curran and Swedish, Helena Ejeson were runners-up in a $10k in London in August and after this Curran played no more matches in 2001.

She had a year-end doubles world-ranking of 375.

In January 2002, Claire reached the finals of a $10k in Hull partnering fellow Irishwoman, Elsa O'Riain.

Curran also made her debut on the ITF Circuit in 2006 in a $10,000 event in Dublin where she was beaten in the first round in both the singles and the doubles events (partnering Yvonne Doyle).

Curran retired from professional sport in 2007 following six years of professional play.

Following her retirement, she was recruited by the LTA and alongside Nigel Sears coached former British No. 1, Anne Keothavong, and subsequently Laura Robson and the doubles team of Jocelyn Rae and Anna Smith.

Curran's tennis talent was spotted first in her native Belfast, capital of Northern Ireland.

She was soon winning Ulster and all-Ireland titles and being singled out by the Irish tennis authorities for a promising amateur career on the ITF Junior Circuit.

At the age of 14, during the troubled times of Northern Ireland, beset with political and religious divisions, Curran moved to Dublin.