Number 8 seed Daria Kasatkina battled past Danish qualifier Clara Tauson 6-4 7-6 (7-0) after 1 hour and 51 minutes in a match featuring 11 breaks of serve at the St. Petersburg Ladies Trophy.
The first set started with four breaks in the first five games. Kasatikina broke twice in the third and fifth games in a row to race out to a 5-1. Tauson clawed her way back to 4-5 with a break in the eighth game, but Kasatkina served out the first set at 30 in the 10th game.
Kasatkina earned a break in the third game of the second set to take a 2-1 lead. Tauson broke straight back and won eight of the next nine points to build a 3-2 lead. Kasatkina won three consecutive games to go up 5-3. Tauson converted her third break-back in the 10th game to draw level to 5-5, as Kasatkina was serving for the match. Tauson hit a drop-shot into the net to face a break point in the 11th game. Kasatkina hit a forehand to break serve for 6-5. Serving for the match for the second time, Kasatkina was broken with a double fault sending the second set into a tie-break. Kasatkina raced out to a 7-0 in the tie-break setting up a round of 16 match against Aliaksandra Sasnovich.
Kasatkina stopped Tauson’s winning streak of 13 consecutive matches. The Danish teenager won her first maiden WTA title in Lyon breaking the top 100 of the WTA Ranking for the first time in her career and qualified for the main draw in St. Petersburg.
Kasatkina lost to Aryna Sabalenka at the Australian Open and clinched her first title since 2018 at the Phillip Island Trophy during the Australian hard-court swing.
“Clara was playing super aggressive, and I know that’s why she won in Lyon, because probably she likes to play indoors a lot. She is going to be very dangerous on the hardcourts and indoors especially”, said Kasatkina.
Kamilla Rakhimova scpred her second WTA-level main draw win with a 6-1 6-7 (2-7) 6-2 win over WTA debutante Daria Mishina to set up an all-Russian Round of 16 match against Veronika Kudemertova.
Wang Xinyu battled past Viktoriya Tomova 6-1 5-7 7-5. Wang built up a 5-2 lead in the third set, but she missed four match points on Tomova’s serve at 5-3. The Chinese player converted her fifth match point to clinch her first WTA main draw win since Tianjin 2019. Wang set up a round of 16 match against Svetlana Kuznetsova.
Katerina Siniakova served 78 % of her first serve points and broke five times to cruise past Kirsten Flipkens 6-1 6-2.
