Daria Kasatkina

Daria Sergeyevna Kasatkina (born 7 May 1997) is a Russian professional tennis player.

She made her top-ten debut in the WTA rankings towards the end of the 2018 season and has been ranked as high as world No. 8, achieved on 24 October 2022.

Kasatkina has won six singles titles and one title in doubles on the WTA Tour.

Born to athletic parents who were nationally ranked in athletics and ice hockey, Kasatkina began playing tennis at age six at the insistence of her older brother.

She was the first Russian girl to win the event since Nadia Petrova in 1998 and helped Russia sweep both junior singles events, with fellow European 16s champion Andrey Rublev winning the boys' singles title.

In August, Kasatkina also participated in the Youth Olympic Games in Nanjing.

She earned a silver medal in doubles alongside compatriot Anastasiya Komardina.

Alongside Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, Liudmila Samsonova, Veronika Kudermetova, and Ekaterina Alexandrova, she helped secure Russia's first Billie Jean King Cup title since 2008.

Kasatkina is known for her crafty style of play and diverse shotmaking.

Compared to hard-hitting players who rely on their physicality and pure power, she relies on her speed and quick thinking to outfox her opponents.

Daria was born in Tolyatti, Samara Oblast to Tatyana Borisovna (née Timkovskaya) and Sergey Igorevich Kasatkin.

Tolyatti is an industrial city located about 1000 km southeast of Moscow.

Her father works as an engineer at the Volga Automotive Plant and her mother was a lawyer.

Both of her parents were nationally ranked athletes in Russia (officially known as Candidates for Master of Sports); her mother in athletics, and her father in ice hockey.

Kasatkina also has an older brother named Alexandr.

Her brother had played tennis casually, and convinced her parents to have her also begin playing the sport when she was six years old.

She initially played two to three times a week for two years.

In time she began competing in higher level tournaments.

As a junior, Kasatkina was ranked as high as No. 3 in the world.

She began competing on the ITF Junior Circuit shortly after turning 14 years old and won her first title at just her second career event, the low-level Grade 4 Samara Cup.

In early 2012 while still 14, Kasatkina won two higher-level Grade 2 tournaments in Moldova and France, the former of which was the first Grade 2 event she entered.

Towards the end of the year, she helped Russia reach the final of the Junior Fed Cup alongside Elizaveta Kulichkova and Alina Silich, where they finished runners-up to the United States.

Kasatkina began excelling at the highest level junior tournaments in 2013.

She reached her first Grade-1 final in doubles in January, which she followed up with her first Grade-1 final in singles in April.

After failing to win a match at her only two Grade A events the previous year, Kasatkina finished runner-up to Belinda Bencic at the Trofeo Bonfiglio in May.

She then won her first junior Grand Slam matches the following month, reaching the quarterfinals at the French Open.

Following this event, she did not play another tournament until late August, when she won her first Grade-1 title at the International Hard Court Championship in the United States.

Kasatkina's last event of the year was the Junior Fed Cup, where she played the No. 1 singles matches.

With Veronika Kudermetova and Aleksandra Pospelova, the top-seeded Russian team won the tournament, defeating Australia in the final.

She excelled as a junior, winning the European 16s championship and one junior Grand Slam singles title at the 2014 French Open.

Kasatkina had her best year on the junior tour in 2014, despite competing in just five tournaments.

She reached both the singles and doubles finals at the Grade 1 Trofeo Mauro Sabatini, and won the title in singles.

At the last ITF tournament of her career, Kasatkina won her first and only junior Grand Slam title in the girls' singles event at the French Open.

As the No. 8 seed, she defeated top seed Ivana Jorović in the final, coming back from a set down.

Kasatkina quickly ascended up the professional rankings, reaching No. 32 in the world while still 18 years old and winning her first WTA title in 2017 as a teenager at the Charleston Open.

She rose to prominence in 2018 by finishing runner-up to fellow up-and-coming player Naomi Osaka at the Premier Mandatory Indian Wells Open in a match regarded as representing a new wave of women's tennis.

Kasatkina also has won the biggest titles of her career at the Kremlin Cup and at the St. Petersburg Trophy at home in Russia.

Following three successful seasons on the WTA Tour, Kasatkina struggled in 2019, falling into the bottom half of the top 100.

However, she had a resurgent 2021, claiming two titles to return to the top 30, followed by another two titles in 2022, marking her to return to the top 10.

In team competition, Kasatkina led the Russian team to victory at the 2020–21 Billie Jean King Cup, winning all her matches in the tournament.