Russian Veronika Kudermetova won the Toray Pan Pacific Open Tennis tournament in Tokyo

The winner of the Toray Pan Pacific Open Tennis, a representative tournament of the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) category 500 with a prize fund of $780 thousand, which ended in Tokyo. — became Russian Veronika Kudermetova. Having beaten former world number one Polish player Iga Szwiatek in the quarterfinals, and in the final – American Jessica Pegula, who ranks fourth in the WTA rankings, she broke a long series of failures, won her second title in her career and established herself in the top twenty of the world rankings.

Strong tennis players who rarely managed to win tournaments have always been found. For example, Greek Maria Sakkari, maintaining her place in the world elite for the third year in a row, won only the second title in her career in Guadalajara in mid-September. 26-year-old Veronika Kudermetova is slightly younger than Sakkari and, unlike her, has been in the top ten for only a short time – a total of three months at the end of last season and at the beginning of this season. However, by and large, her career still leaves a feeling of unsaidness.

Possessing an excellent serve and a sharp attacking game – qualities that from time to time allow her to defeat strong opponents – Kudermetova cannot really make herself known.

Until this Sunday, she had only one successful final match, won in Charleston in the spring of 2021, and she lost five other finals, including the previous one against Ekaterina Alexandrova at the June grass tournament in ‘s-Hertogenbosch.

The fact that the major Tokyo tournament, which Kudermetova won completely unexpectedly, will be able to radically change the vector of development of her career is not yet at all obvious. But in any case, her Japanese triumph is a real sensation, because in five other competitions held after Wimbledon on hard court, the Russian won only two matches. In Tokyo, in the quarterfinals she beat the previously undefeated former world number one, Poland’s Iga Szwiatek, in the semifinals she broke the resistance of her compatriot Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, who is on the rise, and the next day she left virtually no chance for the American Jessica Pegula, who ranks fourth in the WTA classification and a day earlier, she secured a ticket to the final WTA Finals tournament in Cancun, Mexico, following the Belarusian Aryna Sabalenka, Iga Shwiatek, Elena Rybakina from Kazakhstan and her compatriot Coco Gauff.

Kudermetova started this match very well, taking 10 of the 12 points played out in the first three games. Soon Pegula, who spent only 3 hours 26 minutes on her way to the final (the same figure for the Russian woman, who fought for about the same amount of time with Pavlyuchenkova alone – 9 hours 1 minute), managed to win back the break. But then Kudermetova held her serve very confidently, and her opponent probably understood that any mistake would cost her the first set. In the end, this is what happened – with the score 40:40 in the twelfth game, Pegula made two double faults in a row, and this episode turned out to be decisive. In the second game, Kudermetova had a complete advantage; the fight was only in the very last game of her serve, but it also ended successfully. As a result, 7:5, 6:1 in 84 minutes, and in terms of the number of points won at the reception (28 versus 13), the Russian woman more than doubled the American woman.

“Jessica is a great player, a great fighter, and I prepared myself for a tough fight. Now I’m happy and extremely motivated for the end of the year,” said the winner after the game, who will now play in Beijing at the Chinese Open, a 1000 category tournament that has already started, where she will enter the fight from the second round.

In general, it is already clear that, despite the brilliant performance in Tokyo, the current season for Kudermetova is not as successful as the previous one.

In the ranking at the moment, she has risen from 19th place to 16th; in terms of points scored since January, she is now 15th, but returning to the top ten, having made a jump in the few remaining weeks, is extremely difficult from this position. Rather, the long-awaited second title may become the basis that will allow Kudermetova to continue her rise next season. Especially if the recent joint experience of cooperation with coach Dmitry Tursunov, who did not come to Japan, but previously worked for several weeks with Sergei Demekhin, the husband and permanent coach of the newly crowned Toray Pan Pacific Open Tennis champion, is considered successful.

As for the historical background, having earned $74 thousand in prize money in Tokyo, Kudermetova became far from the first Russian tennis player to conquer the Japanese peak. Previously, this was achieved twice by Maria Sharapova and once each by Elena Dementieva, Dinara Safina, Nadezhda Petrova and Lyudmila Samsonova, who distinguished herself in Tokyo a year ago.

Evgeniy Fedyakov