Samsonova was born 11 November 1998 in the industrial city of Olenegorsk, Murmansk Oblast, Russia. Their family moved with the then-one-year-old Liudmila to Italy. Her father Dmitry, a table tennis player, was invited to play for the club “Ferentino” based in Torino. Her father urged her to start playing either table tennis or lawn tennis, choosing the latter. She started playing tennis at the age of six, joining Riccardo Piatti’s tennis academy in Sanremo after the local tennis federation helped her financially with that. Until 2018, Liudmila represented Italy in professional tennis, before switching to the Russian flag. In July 2021, she explained the reason behind her decision was the extra pressure of competing for the Italian national team, a country where tennis is more followed than in Russia where she feels like competing only for herself, especially considering her “boom boom” hard-hitting game style. Russian sources were more specific about all the reasons behind the unusual switch after turning 18 in the light of significant amount of local players switching from the Russian flag. According to the Tennis Weekend, Samsonova faced problems while trying to obtain an Italian passport and there was a certain shortage of support for her as an immigrant from the Italian Tennis Federation. She keeps practicing outside of Russia, as she is unsatisfied with the condition for professional tennis provided by the Russian Tennis Federation domestically. In October 2021, Samsonova clarified she has never had an Italian citizenship and thus has never faced the option of choosing between the two flags.
Sherif spent her final two years of college at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California, graduating in 2018 with a bachelor of science in sports medicine. She was part of the university’s tennis team and was an All-American in both 2017 and 2018, and the West Coast Conference Player of the Year in 2018. She made the semifinals of the 2018 NCAA singles tournament and ended her senior season ranked 11th in the nation in singles. Sherif made her WTA Tour singles debut at the 2020 Prague Open. She made history as the first Egyptian female player to make it into the main draw of a Grand Slam tournament, at the 2020 French Open. She made history again for Egyptian tennis at the 2021 Australian Open, becoming the first woman from her nation to win a Grand Slam main-draw match. Sherif became also the first Egyptian woman to qualify for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and reach a WTA final in Cluj-Napoca.