By Erik Gudris                                     Photo Credit: AFP/Getty Images

(February 21st, 2012) Twitter has quickly become the go-to source for instant news about tennis, especially from the players themselves who are quick to share insights, pictures and even jokes to those fans who follow them. So when a devoted Marat Safin fan sent out a message that the Russian superstar was actually a new member of the social media platform, a mixture of joy and disbelief filtered through the tennis Twitter family for most of Monday morning.

Fake Twitter accounts of famous people are common, so it finally took a message from the two-time Major champion on his account @safin_marat1 saying, "Dear followers! It is me and I am real :) today I was at university in NNovgorod, the were about 100 students and some spicy questions :)" to finally confirm that it really was him.

A few hours later his sister, Dinara Safina also confirmed that it really was her brother when she tweeted, "So let's all officially welcome my brother @safin_marat1 on twitter!!! So u see guys I finally convinced him to join twitter!!!"

The new account drew tweets of approval from Andy Murray's mother, Judy Murray, who posted on her Twitter account, "Oh my. Marat Safin is on twitter. Too much!!!!" While tennis coach and T.V. analyst Darren Cahill joked, "I've never seen my wife so interested in twitter as she is today. Oh.. Marat Safin just joined?... makes sense now."

Safin, who retired from the sport in 2009, told his new followers that he would read every message sent to him despite his busy schedule that includes being a member of the Russian Parliament and working to expand tennis in his native country.