Charleston has earned a reputation for launching new stars into the WTA stratosphere. Who might give us a sneak preview of big wins to come this year?
A few minutes after winning the Volvo Car Open last spring, Daria Kasatkina was faced with a choice most 19-year-olds can only dream of making. Namely: which of the sponsor’s complementary automobiles should she drive away with, the sleek sedan or the sturdy SUV? Kasatkina didn’t think twice.
“The big one, the SUV, I took,” the Russian said with a smile. “You know, in Slovakia [where Kasatkina trains] not the best roads, not like in USA. So I have to take a big car, a big safe car.”
Safety, steadiness, sturdiness, margin for error: those words also aptly summed up the game that Kasatkina had just used to win her first WTA title, at the Premier-level event in Charleston, S.C. In a field that featured bold-faced names like Venus Williams, Caroline Wozniacki, Madison Keys and Johanna Konta, the unseeded—and at 5'7", seemingly undersized—Kasatkina used her smooth sliding and shotmaking skills to navigate her way to the final. There she cruised past her soon-to-be-famous fellow 19-year-old, Jelena Ostapenko.
A top junior and a quarterfinalist at the 2016 Olympics, Kasatkina had long been expected to win her share of tournaments. As the 2014 Roland Garros girls’ champion, and a lifelong fan and follower of Rafael Nadal—“When I watch him, he plays with a lot of spin; I was trying to play the same”—she knew her game was well-suited to clay. She also knew how to bite a winner’s trophy, à la Rafa. But she didn’t expect to be biting her first one at such an historic, high-profile event.
“I feel I’m just sleeping and everything is not real,” Kasatkina said afterward.
This story is from the Mar/Apr 2018 edition of Tennis.
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This story is from the Mar/Apr 2018 edition of Tennis.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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