The Russian tennis player lost to Elena Rybakina in the decisive match of the WTA tournament in Abu Dhabi

In the final of the Mubadala Abu Dhabi Open, a Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) 500 category tournament with a prize fund of $922 thousand, which ended in the capital of the United Arab Emirates, the fifth racket of the world Elena Rybakina beat the strongest Russian tennis player Daria Kasatkina in two sets. Despite this defeat, Kasatkina, who played her final since the beginning of the season, will rise in the rankings from 14th place to 13th, and in terms of points scored in January and the first half of February, she set a personal record.

The final in Abu Dhabi was Daria Kasatkina’s second this season. The first, against Elena Ostapenko from Latvia, was played in mid-January in Adelaide, where the Russian woman was frankly lucky. The fact is that her rivals in the quarterfinals and semifinals, respectively, German Laura Siegemund and American Jessica Pegula, who was fifth in the world rankings at that time, were unable to take the court due to minor injuries, deciding to take care before the Australian Open. However, this week the path to the decisive stage for Kasatkina, on the contrary, turned out to be long and difficult. It took her almost eight and a half hours to win four victories, and Saturday’s semifinal against the 13th racket of the world, Brazilian Beatrice Haddad Maia, whom Kasatkina had never beaten before, lasted three hours and ended only in a tiebreaker in the third game.

In such a situation, of course, it was difficult to count on a victory over the representative of Kazakhstan Elena Rybakina, the 2022 Wimbledon champion, who even before the start of the Mubadala Abu Dhabi Open looked like his clear favorite, and in the semifinals, also in three sets, but much faster, she broke the resistance even more one Russian tennis player Lyudmila Samsonova.

The tennis that Rybakina showed did not look perfect, but overall it was her signature sweeping game, based on a powerful serve and accented shots from the baseline.

In order to successfully resist representatives of this style, you need to be in good physical condition, which in this case Daria Kasatkina could not boast of. The consequence of this was the fact that in the first game, which ended in favor of Rybakina with a score of 6:1, she never took her serve.

The second set was a more stubborn battle. After Kasatkina, who made a total of nine double faults, finally played a solid game on her serve, it seemed that Rybakina might have problems, but it never really came to that. In the ninth game, the fifth racket of the world made a break, and in the tenth game, after the score was 30:30, the referee suddenly had to announce a short rain break, she clearly played the last two rallies. As a result – 6:1, 6:4. Elena Rybakina, who began this season with a victory at a similar category tournament in Brisbane, won her second title this year and the seventh of her career.

In turn, Daria Kasatkina brought the total number of her finals to 15, and although only six of them remain victorious for her, the Russian should be pleased with this week, as a result of which she managed to rise in the ranking from 14th place to 13th.

In general, January and the first half of February were also successful for Kasatkina. Having gained a record number of rating points during this period – 838, she, despite losing in the second round of the Australian Open, ranks high in seventh place in terms of points earned since the beginning of the season.

Next week, the series of WTA competitions in the Middle East will continue with a larger tournament – the Qatar TotalEnergies Open, which has already started in Doha, has a category of 1000 and a prize fund of $3.2 million. The list of participants there is headed by the first racket of the world Iga Szwiatek from Poland, and Kasatkina, who received The 11th number of the “seeding” will begin it with a meeting with her compatriot Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova.

Evgeniy Fedyakov