Daria Kasatkina, No. 37 in the WTA ranking, opened with a win at the Mutua Madrid Open, beating Romanian Irina-Camelia Begu 6-4, 4-6, 7-6(1) in 3 hours and 1 minute of play. \u201cThe year has started very well for me\u201d, recognised Kasatkina. The Russian player arrived in Madrid after recently taking the spoils at the WTA 500 in Saint Petersburg, her second title of the season after winning the WTA 250 at Phillip Island in February. However, according to the 23-year-old player \u201cit doesn\u2019t matter what has happened in previous tournaments. The only thing that matters in the next match\u201d.<\/p>\n
In this, her fifth appearance at the Madrid WTA 1000, the 2018 quarter-finalist was not willing to talk about expectations for this year\u2019s tournament. \u201cToday I\u2019m happy with my victory, but tomorrow will be another day to get back to training. The most important thing is not even the next match, it\u2019s the next point I have to play\u201d. In the last edition of the Madrid tournament, in 2019, Kasatkina bowed out in the first round, which is why the player herself stated that \u201cthere is no need to be self-destructive, because if you give your best, the results will come\u201d.<\/p>\n
Although this year\u2019s Mutua Madrid Open will be a considerably different one, she was very grateful to the tournament. \u201cThe best courts in the world are here in Madrid, and although, unfortunately, we can\u2019t visit the city, we\u2019re going to give everything we\u2019ve got\u201d, said the Russian. Finally, fans are allowed to fill the courts, prompting Kasatkina to declare \u201cevery tournament with fans is a breath of fresh air. That\u2019s what sport is about\u201d. Likewise, the No. 37 in the WTA ranking commented that \u201cwhenever we can play with spectators it\u2019s good for them and also for us\u201d.<\/p>\n
One player who will not be playing in this year\u2019s tournament, but has been training in the Caja M\u00e1gica is Carla Su\u00e1rez, \u201ca great inspiration\u201d to the Russian player. A few days ago, the Spaniard announced on social media that she had completed her treatment and overcome Hodgkin lymphoma, and Kasatkina dedicated a few words to her: \u201cEveryone is happy to see her back. She has to take it step by step because she hasn\u2019t played for a long time, but it will be very exciting to see her on the courts again\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Daria Kasatkina, No. 37 in the WTA ranking, opened with a win at the Mutua Madrid Open, beating Romanian Irina-Camelia Begu 6-4, 4-6, 7-6(1) in 3 hours and 1 minute of play. \u201cThe year has started very well for me\u201d, recognised Kasatkina. The Russian player arrived in Madrid after recently taking the spoils at the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":75986,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"mc4wp_mailchimp_campaign":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,142],"tags":[221,17,42],"class_list":["post-75985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mutua-news","category-womens-tennis","tag-daria-kasatkina-en","tag-mutua-madrid-open-en","tag-wta-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/desarrollo.mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/desarrollo.mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/desarrollo.mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desarrollo.mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desarrollo.mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75985"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/desarrollo.mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75985\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desarrollo.mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/desarrollo.mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desarrollo.mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desarrollo.mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}