Svetlana was born June 27th 1985 in St-Petersburg, Russia and started playing there, she later moved at the Emilio Sanchez Tennis Academy in Spain (she still lives there) and is currently coached by coaches from that academy. She started her pro career in 2000 when she played 5 ITF tournaments reaching the quarterfinals twice. In only a few years on the tour, Svetlana has showed outstanding improvement and her ranking certainly shows as she improved over 600 ranks in her first full time year on the tour and entered the top 50 in her second. She now seems poised to continue to improve at a very quick pace to keep up with all the other Russians:)