From Russia, With Love

In 1996 Todd Diamond was 25 and trying to make a name for himself in the hockey agent business. Diamond was working in Russia, which was once virgin territory, but post-Communism, was teeming with American hockey agents. He had some things going for him, though. He had gumption. He was willing to travel rough. He also had family history, since six of his eight great-grandparents had been born in the former Soviet Union.

One warm day in June of that year Diamond was in the Moscow apartment of the parents of Maxim Afinogenov, a 16-year-old hockey player. Maxim's mother, Raisa, was preparing a meal. His father, Sergei, was puttering around. Maxim's nine-year-old sister, Katia, sauntered through the living room and challenged her brother to a game of tennis. The four Afinogenovs and Diamond headed to a park.

Diamond was stunned. He'd never seen a nine-year-old tennis phenom in action. Katia would lose a point, get mad and then win the next three. She was fanatically determined. Diamond could see that, and he suddenly felt the urge also to get into the tennis agent business. Later that night, back at the apartment, Sergei poured two cognacs, raised his hand with Diamond's and toasted their future, wherever it would take them.

That's how the American odyssey of the Afinogenovs began. Maxim, now 20, is a rookie winger for the Buffalo Sabres in the first year of a three-year, $2.3 million contract. NHL observers talk about his effortless skating, his superb puckhandling, his potential to be a big scorer. They talk about how lucky the Sabres were to select him with the 69th pick of the 1997 draft. Through Sunday, Maxim had 14 goals and 14 assists in his first 53 NHL games.

Katia, who turned 13 in January, is a full-time student at a Florida tennis academy in Pompano Beach run by Rick Macci, who taught Venus and Serena Williams and Jennifer Capriati when they were kids. Macci claims that Katia will be better than any of them. Raisa and Sergei have left the motherland, too. They live with Katia in a condo on the grounds of the Palm Aire Country Club in Pompano Beach. As for Maxim, he lives at a hotel in Buffalo, counting the days until Raisa's next visit. "It's an existence," he says in Russian. "It's not a life."

Nobody said it would be easy. For the Afinogenovs, Russia beckons. It's home, the place of their language, food, friends, family. But they're in the U.S. for a good reason, each of the Afinogenovs says, in his or her own way. To put it simply, they're in America so that Maxim and Katia can train in the best facilities and prove themselves against the best competition in the world.

It's no accident that Maxim found his way to a team sport and Katia to an individual one. Maxim talks happily about his hero, Wayne Gretzky, but ask him what he wants to accomplish in hockey, and he mentions nothing about personal success. Instead he says, "Win many Stanley Cups for my team." Katia will talk about the two Martinas—Navratilova and Hingis—and Monica Seles, her models, but their achievements don't intimidate her. "My goal is to be the best," she says. She speaks fluent English, which she learned mostly from watching TV after moving to America, and expresses herself incisively. "It's not about money. I had everything I needed in Russia. It's about winning and making the people who watch you like the way you play tennis."

Katia came to the U.S. before Maxim. In December 1997 an intermediary for Diamond's agency, International Sports Advisors (ISA) of Montclair, N.J., called Macci to see if he would consider Katia, who was 10, for a spot in his academy. Macci gets many such calls. When he was told Katia was Russia's 12-and-under girls' tennis champion, he was curious. When he was told that her brother was one of the top junior hockey players in Russia, he became more intrigued. When he was told that Katia's mother was twice the Soviet track and field champion at 800 meters, Macci said, "When can you get her here?"

The next month Katia made her U.S. tennis debut, on a court in Pompano Beach, where she was throttled by a succession of American teenage girls. Macci watched her for two hours and was mesmerized. She was doing things he had never seen such a young girl do. Though her strokes were unrefined, she was hitting winners from awkward positions, her feet going one way, her hands going another. She was getting to nearly every ball. She was attacking the net. Macci's mind raced.

Within weeks the Rick Macci Tennis Academy, ISA and the Afinogenovs had signed a 10-year contract. Under the terms of the deal Macci agreed to teach tennis to Katia until 2007, manage her career in conjunction with ISA arrange and pay for home schooling, and employ Raisa as a fitness instructor. The Afinogenovs agreed to share with Macci and ISA an undisclosed percentage of Katia's tennis winnings and endorsement earnings after she turns pro a year from now, when she's 14.