The Grand Slam ended with a Russian sensation

Russian tennis player Diana Schneider and Czech Lucy Gavlichkova won the US Open 2022 in doubles. For the 18-year-old Muscovite, this title was the third in the junior Grand Slam tournaments in doubles. “MK” talks about the new star of domestic tennis.

History of success

Diana Schneider was born on April 2, 2004 in Moscow. She played her first qualifying tournament, according to the website of the Association of Tennis Players “Russian Tennis Tour”, in Ufa in early February 2015, where she took third place.

At the end of February 2020, Schneider, as part of the Russian national team, won the TE Winter Cups by HEAD, becoming the owner of the European Winter Team Cup in the under-16 age category. Then in the French Brest, our young tennis players Diana Schneider, Erika Andreeva and Elena Pridankina, under the guidance of coach Oksana Mishukova, played in the final with the Netherlands national team and achieved a victory with a score of 2:1.

At the beginning of May 2022, Diana Schneider won her fourth trophy in her career (third in the 2022 season), winning the W60 series competitions in Istanbul. In the final, she defeated Czech Nikola Bartunkova. For Diana, this was the third ITF title in a row. A week earlier, she won the competition in Kazakh Shymkent, and before that in Portuguese Oeiras.

Diana won her first Grand Slam title at Wimbledon 2021, when tennis players from Russia still played there. In the final, together with the Belarusian Kristina Dmitruk, she defeated the Belgian tennis player Sofia Kostulas and the Finnish player Laura Hietaranta.

A few months later, at the 2022 Australian Junior Open, Schneider was paired with American Clairvie Ngunui. Seeded under the first number, the girls reached the final, where they defeated the Canadians Kayla Kross and Victoria Mboko. Ahead was the US Open-2022.

Wins and losses at the US Open

Before the start of the US Open, Diane Schneider entered the University of North Carolina. At the junior tournament, she performed in both singles and doubles.

In the Women’s Open Women’s Singles Championship, Schneider was seeded seventh and managed to reach the semi-finals, where she faced Lucy Havlichkova of the Czech Republic. Diana could not pass it. Nevertheless, it was a very good result for a young Russian woman. And now she is ranked 246th in the WTA singles rankings.

Of course, it was a shame to lose in the semifinals. And yet, Schneider did not leave New York without a victory. Moreover, she managed to win her next title already in doubles with the same Gavlichkova. As our athlete admitted in her interview after the victory, even before the start of the championship, to her joy, she received a note from the Czech tennis player with an offer to play together.

“I was sure that I wanted to play with her because she is a good player. I thought we had a good chance. We just need to find our game, find our connection in order to better understand each other at the right moments of matches. I think we did a great job and found an easy way to finish it well,” Schneider said after winning the final.

The fact that the girls, whose duet was seeded under the first number, really understood each other well, is evidenced by the fact that Gavlichkova and Schneider, playing together for the first time, did not need a tie-break in any of their five victories.

In the final against Schneider and Gavlichkova, the Germans Karolina Kühl and Ella Seidel entered the court. It took Diana and Lucy 53 minutes to beat them in two games 6:3, 6:2.

According to experts, almost the entire match Gavlichkova and Schneider played better, more dangerous on the return attack and deservedly continued to win. They began to dominate at 2-3 in the first set, winning seven games in a row to take a 6-3, 3-0 lead.

Although Kühl and Seidel managed to pull themselves together and tried to do something with the final result, winning two games, reducing their gap in the second set to 2:3. But that was all they were capable of. And Havlichkova and Schneiderov won the next three games, including two breaks.

Congratulating Diana on her victory, tennis fans in social networks write that we have a new bright star and expect new successes from her on the courts.