Spotlight On ... Chanelle Scheepers

Chanelle Scheepers is a South African tennis player who has played on the ITF circuit for most of her career. She is currently ranked at # 131, just below her career-high ranking of # 127 that was achieved in December 2009). Her 2009 season started promisingly with qualification at the Australian Open in January, although she exited in the first round to 18th seed Dominika Cibulkova. The following month, she qualified for Memphis and won a round before losing to 8th seed Pauline Parmentier.

Her qualifying successes came to a halt in March 2009 as she failed to qualify for Monterrey, but she made up for that by winning an ITF title in Mexico. She failed in qualifying for Ponte Vedra Beach, Charleston, Stuttgart and Estoril but won an ITF doubles title in Saint Gaudens (w/Rika Fujiwara). She turned that around by qualifying for Roland Garros (l. to 4th seed Elena Dementieva in the opening round of the main draw), beating top 100 player Alla Kudryatseva in the first round of an ITF event in Nottingham (l. to Elena Baltacha in the second round), and qualifying for Birmingham (d. Yaroslava Shvedova in the opening round of the main draw).

In 2010, the South African really came to prominence at Roland Garros. So far, she has reached the fourth round with wins over Akgul Amanmuradova and Gisela Dulko and will face off against Elena Dementieva (who she lost to in the first round in 2009 after qualifying). Her progress through to the fourth round has been all the more impressive when you consider that she was almost down and out in her third qualifying match against Zuzana Ondraskova before regrouping to level the match and go onto win it. It's her best Grand Slam result and marks the first time that a South African woman has reached the fourth round since Amanda Coetzer back in 1997.

Chanelle is coached by Tony Huber, who is married to doubles specialist, Liezel Huber.

Read Chanelle's "Getting to Know" interview on the WTA Tour website here.