Ivanov began courting the girl, who dreamed of a ballet career, in the resort village of Mamontovka near Moscow and persuaded her to take up tennis.
In 1922, at the age of 18, she first stepped onto the court at the Moscow Tennis Championship, losing decisively in singles to Sofia Maltseva, and then also in mixed doubles with Ivanov.
In 1926, at the match-tournament for the best female tennis players of the USSR, held that year instead of the All-Union Championship, Teplyakova defeated both Maltseva and the reigning champion Elena Alexandrova.
In the 1930s, having already graduated from the evening ballet school of the Bolshoi Theater and performing as a dancer in the musical revue with the ensemble of Kasyan Goleizovsky's "30 Girls,"[2] Teplyakova continued to be a leader in Soviet women's tennis.
In 1943, at the Open Championship of Moscow (where Zinaida Klochkova and Tatyana Nalimova were brought from the still-blockaded Leningrad, and Galina Korovina from Orenburg, where she had been working in a hospital), the 38-year-old Teplyakova sustained a meniscus injury that ended her playing career.
[1] Nina Teplyakova was instrumental in the success of two leading Soviet tennis players, Anna Dmitrieva and Olga Morozova.
[3] Among Teplyakova's other students was Svetlana Parkhomenko (Cherneva), a multiple-time USSR Champion in various categories and winner of more than ten professional doubles tournaments.