Second service beyond tennis

Dubai: Diplomat or economist? Those would be the options before Vera Zvonareva as she looks for life beyond tennis.

"I don't know yet where it's going to take me, but at the moment I know it is hard work. I know tennis is hard work, but also studying and being someone else after my tennis career is also hard work," Zvonareva told media at the annual round table conference on the sidelines of the Dubai Duty Free Women's Open.

"At the moment I am just trying to get as much knowledge as I can because knowledge is the base. You need to have knowledge before you start something else. You can't just show up there and tell, ‘Hey, I am Vera Zvonareva, I was a tennis player and now I want that job,'" she added.

International economics

"There are some people that are OK to do that, but me, I am not. If I want that job, I want to make sure that I can do it very well, that I can be good at it. If I am not good at it, there is no reason for me to take that job. So at the moment I am just trying to get some knowledge. But if I look forward, for sure I am interested in that direction — international economic relations."

By far, Russia's best player at the moment as the world number three Zvonareva has been actively pursuing her interests, specially a couple of years back when an injury laid her low for as long as six months. "I do some projects with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs back home, especially with some Unesco thing and different international organisations. Sometimes we have some conferences and I attend them; they invite me, so I can just listen and learn with some people," she said.

Thesis

Her final year with the Diplomatic Academy requires that Zvonareva submit a thesis latest by May this year. "My thesis is on ‘How to improve the competitiveness of Russian produce on the international markets'. I have a deadline and it's about 120 pages. So we will see. I have a lot of material already. I just have to put it together," she said.

"It's tough to focus on working on my thesis. So I am a little bit disappointed in a way because I do not put as much effort, but it is impossible to be good at everything: being a tennis player and student. So I have my priorities at the moment. If I cannot finish it this year, I will take another year and finish it next year. But definitely this is something that helps to take my head off the court and focus on something else as well."