Diana Shnaider is currently combining college tennis with the Pro Tour

Last August, Diana Shnaider, a teenage tennis player from Russia, traveled solo across Europe with a world-class forehand but no working bank card due to financial sanctions against her country. She had to pay for hotels, flights and food in cash.

Last week, she led North Carolina State’s ninth-ranked Division I women’s tennis team to a victory over second-ranked Ohio State.

“It was bad, but now it’s better,” Shnaider said on a video call from Columbus, Ohio, Wednesday.

A southpaw with a flashy and powerful style of play, Shnaider has found stability in the game, even though many observers never imagined she would choose college tennis over playing full-time on the professional tour. The skeptics included her college coach, Simon Earnshaw.

“I didn’t think she was coming,” Earnshaw said in a telephone interview. “But she’s kind of unique. At 18, she’s still a kid, but she’s very clear about how she sees the game and what’s important to her and what’s not important to her. And really, all that matters to her is, ‘How do I get better?’”

Arriving in Raleigh, NC last summer, she ranked 249th in singles on the WTA Tour. She ranks 90th after a surge in Australia, where she qualified for her first Grand Slam tournament, the Australian Open, losing in the second round to sixth-seeded Maria Sakkari of Greece, 3-6, 7- 5, 6-3.

Shnaider has big guns in her cutting forehand and serve. She has fast feet and an attacking mentality that has been there since she learned the game in Tolyatti, across the Volga from Zhigulevsk, her hometown. She moved to Moscow with her family at the age of 9 to find better educational opportunities.

“I never wanted to be a pusher,” she said. “I was always like, ‘Okay, here’s the shot. I kill it.’”

At the Australian Open, her fist pumps and celebratory cries rattled Sakkari, who thought they were aimed at her. Shnaider said that was a misunderstanding and that she yelled at her team in the players’ box on Sakkari’s side of the field.

Shnaider said her run in Australia — and the more than $140,000 in prize money that came with it — didn’t make her reconsider her decision to play in college, even though it was hard for her to criticize it harshly. reading on social media.

“I understand with my mind that I am doing everything right, but when people say mean things, it naturally goes to my heart and soul,” she said. “But I’m just trying to go my own way.”

Shnaider is the first woman in the top 100 singles to play college tennis since 1993, when American Lisa Raymond played in Florida. Shnaider has gone undefeated in singles matches this season for NC State, which is not a traditional tennis powerhouse. But the Wolfpack is 7-1 and undefeated with Shnaider in the lineup.

“She’s definitely the best tennis star in a while,” said Geoff Macdonald, the former women’s coach at Vanderbilt.

The American college game has become another path to professional success in recent years, with standout students such as Cameron Norrie, Jennifer Brady and Danielle Collins making successful transitions. But what separates Shnaider from them is that she made her way into the professional game before college. (NCAA rules allow players to use prize money to cover their documented tennis expenses at any time during that same calendar year, but they must donate the excess to remain eligible.)

Shnaider’s decision was partly due to geopolitics: it allowed her to establish a base in the United States, when her country is considered an outcast in much of the West.

“I think 100 percent her being Russian made all the difference,” said David Secker, an NC State assistant coach.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 brought sanctions against Russians. For tennis players, the sanctions made travel and training more difficult, and increased the possibility of Russian players being banned from tournaments (to date, Wimbledon has been the only major individual event to do so).

Shnaider, who split with her coach in June, wanted to make sure she could keep playing competitively and get better on hard courts. Her best results were on clay.

“I was really scared and thought: what should I do if I’m in Russia with no coach and no matches?” she said.

Before committing to NC State, she had to overcome her doubts. “I thought it would mean I quit tennis, the professional career,” she said.

Her father, Maksim, who helped shape her game, was against it. But her mother, Julia, a trained pianist more focused on education, pushed and helped make initial contact with Secker through a Russian family in the United States last April.

Secker, like Earnshaw, was skeptical that Shnaider was serious about going to college, but he organized a video call and then met Shnaider and her mother at the French Open in June. However, the family remained divided over the issue, and Shnaider continued to make emotional calls to her parents once she was on the road again.

“I was in the middle of nowhere, and I was like, this isn’t helping me,” Shnaider said. “And my dad was like, this is your decision, so make your first full decision yourself.”

It would be NC State. Bureaucratic problems meant she had to wait five days in Warsaw for her student visa, and she raced down a corridor at the US embassy to collect it before closing on Friday. But she reached the United States a few days before the US Open junior tournament and reached the semifinals of the girls’ singles event and won in the doubles with Lucie Havlickova.

But Shnaider remained athletically ineligible. She had signed a contract with Wesport, a management agency in Sweden, and Earnshaw said the NCAA should investigate the agreement to make sure any payments she received were in exchange for the use of her name, likeness and likeness. now allowed by the NCAA

The lawsuit took nearly five months to resolve. “It was an extremely long-lasting frustration,” Earnshaw said.

Shnaider was cleared on February 3, the day before a home game with Oklahoma. Although she has remained undefeated in singles with the team, she has been pleasantly surprised by the level of play. For example, she had to save a match point before beating Ohio State’s Sydni Ratliff.

“I was afraid I was going to lose time and lose my motivation,” Shnaider said of playing college tennis. But she noted that has not happened. “I leave my apartment at 8 a.m., come back at 8 p.m., and I’m passed out.”

She is about to start juggling college tennis and tour tennis and will compete in the WTA event in Monterrey, Mexico, where the main draw begins on Monday. Then comes the qualifying event at the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, California. If she goes deep in either tournament, she will likely miss some college games.

“I would say logistics is the biggest challenge for Diana,” Secker said. “And I also think doubt plays a big part because I think there’s always the doubt that if I play a college game, am I missing out on a chance in the pro game? If I play pro, will I somehow let my team down?”

For at least another few months, Shnaider will attempt to do justice to both worlds, but the challenge pales in comparison to conquering the satellite circuit last year without a chaperone or modern currency. When she won a title in Istanbul, the organizers had to give her the nearly $9,000 cash prize money.

“I was like, what am I supposed to do with that?” she said, holding her right thumb and forefinger wide apart to show the size of the stack of bills. “I was so careful.”

At other times, she said, she barely had enough money to pay for a hotel stay.

“My parents felt very insecure about me,” she said. “My mother said, ‘Don’t carry your passport with you, don’t go out, don’t speak Russian, just stay in the hotel.’ Because she just didn’t know what people can do.”