Dmitry Igorevich Tursunov (; born 12 December 1982) is a retired Russian tennis player and current tennis coach. At age 12 he moved to the United States to train and further his prospects of becoming a professional player. His career-high singles ranking was world No. 20, achieved in October 2006. Tursunov jokes about his lack of ability and success on clay courts. He was sponsored by Fila and Wilson. He helped the Russian Davis Cup team win the 2006 Davis Cup and reach the finals of the 2007 Davis Cup. Tennis career Tursunov began playing tennis in Moscow at the age of five when his father made him play a few hours a day. He came to the United States to train with Vitaly Gorin. I practiced a few hours a day. My dad realized fairly early that I had a lot of potential. A lot of people criticize him for basically choosing that career for me. He understood that I didn’t have many options to make money and since he really liked tennis, he decided that I was to be a tennis player. It just happened that I was naturally good at it. Early years Tursunov played his first match in June 1998 against Chris Groer in a Futures event in Los Angeles and won, but lost in the following round. In 1999, the Russian played in the Futures events in Philippines and United States and was able to reach two semifinals and a quarterfinal. In 2000, he broke a leg in January, which forced him to miss four months of the season. When he came back, he continued playing in Futures events in the United States. He reached his first Futures final in Haines City, Florida, but lost to Australian Jaymon Crabb. He then won his first Futures title the following week, defeating another Australian Peter Luczak. He reached another final in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, losing to Scott Barron and won two more Futures events in Malibu, California over José de Armas and in Scottsdale, Arizona over Stefan Wauters. In 2001, Tursunov won the Futures event in Boca Raton over Jeff Morrison, then the Dallas Challenger defeating Justin Bower. After these two lower-level tournament successes, Tursunov qualified for his first ATP event in 2001 Kroger St. Jude International and made the quarterfinals, earning his first top-100 win over then world No. 51, Greg Rusedski along the way, before losing