Daria Kasatkina reached the semi-finals of the WTA Elite Trophy

The first semi-finalist of the WTA Elite Trophy – the second most important final competition of the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) with a prize fund of $2.4 million, taking place in Zhuhai, China – was Russian Daria Kasatkina. Following the Czech Barbora Krejcikova in the Azalea group, she beat Magda Linett from Poland. Another Russian tennis player, Lyudmila Samsonova, who defeated Chinese Zhu Lin in her first match in the Rose group, can also count on a place in the semifinals.

The current season for Daria Kasatkina, of course, cannot be considered a failure. But so far you can’t call him very successful either. It is already clear that compared to the previous season, which Kasatkina managed to finish in eighth place in the world rankings, she has taken a step back, and the main reason for this is her unconvincing performances at the Grand Slam championships. If last year Kasatkina reached the semifinals of the French Open, now she has not even managed to reach the quarterfinals at any of the four most prestigious tennis competitions. She showed her best results at two 500 category tournaments – January in Adelaide and June in Eastbourne, where she lost in the finals. As a result, Kasatkina is now in the middle of the second ten, and can count on the last place in the top 10 only if she wins the title in Zhuhai.

However, it’s not that far away. Kasatkina played both of her group stage matches at the WTA Elite Trophy at a good level. The Russian defeated Czech Barbora Krejcikova, who now completes the top ten, in three sets on Wednesday, almost taking the decisive game to zero, and she dealt with Australian Open semi-finalist Magda Linett from Poland even faster on Thursday – 6:3, 6: 4. In 19 games, the opponents made 13 breaks, but eight of them were scored by Kasatkina, who won more points not on her first, but on her second serve. Thus, Krejcikova can fly to Cancun, Mexico for the main final tournament, where she will perform in doubles and will be first in singles, not second alternate. The fact is that another representative of the Czech Republic, Karolina Muchova, who, after reaching the final of a major tournament in Cincinnati and the semi-final of the US Open, overloaded her wrist, did not have time to heal it. As a result, the ninth racket of the world, Greek Maria Sakkari, received the right to play in Cancun.

Kasatkina is now waiting for her opponent in one of the semi-final pairs. Their compositions will be determined according to special rules. After the names of all four tennis players who took first place in their groups become known, a draw will take place, before which the first and second seed numbers will be given to the players with the highest places in the ranking.

But there are no easy paths in the semifinals for Kasatkina in any case: the composition of the tournament as a whole is very even. It is possible, by the way, that her next opponent will be compatriot Lyudmila Samsonova, who beat Chinese Zhu Lin on Thursday in her first match of the Rose group – 2:6, 6:2, 6:1. On Friday she meets Veronika Kudermetova, who previously lost to the Chinese representative in two games, and if she wins, she will definitely take first place. But if Kudermetova wins, you will have to compare an additional indicator – the percentage of games won – among the three tennis players, and in any case it will be the best among Zhu Lin. Kudermetova can no longer reach the semifinals, so Samsonova is probably still the favorite in the Russian confrontation. After all, she is extremely motivated, since, like Kasatkina, she still claims a place in the top 10. To this we can add that the Russians know each other very well, because they played together all year in doubles, and the score of their personal matches in singles is still equal – 2:2.

In the other two groups the situation looks the same. There, in the final matches, tickets to the semi-finals will be played by tennis players who already have one victory each. In the Camellia group, these are the Brazilian Beatrice Haddad Maia and the French Caroline Garcia, who left the American Madison Keys behind in the play-off, and in the Orchid group – Jelena Ostapenko from Latvia and the Chinese Zheng Qingwen, who previously beat the Croatian Donna Vekic.

Evgeniy Fedyakov