Kasatkina, Gavrilova Choreograph Epic Handshake Routine In Charleston
After a thrilling three set match on Charleston’s Stadium court, good friends Daria Kasatkina and Daria Gavrilova met at the net for an amusing attempt at a fake-out handshake.
After a thrilling three set match on Charleston’s Stadium court, good friends Daria Kasatkina and Daria Gavrilova met at the net for an amusing attempt at a fake-out handshake.
Three-time champion Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova looked on course for a fourth Abierto GNP Seguros title after taking down No.3 seed Caroline Garcia in straight sets and booking a place into the final.
CHARLESTON, SC, USA – Kicking off finals Sunday at the Volvo Car Open, World No.1 Bethanie Mattek-Sands treated the Charleston crowd to a rousing doubles match alongside partner and Australian Open co-champion Lucie Safarova.
Up against a newly formed Czech duo in Lucie Hradecka and Katerina Siniakova, Mattek-Sands and Safarova recovered from a tough second set to rebound in the match tie-break, winning, 6-4, 1-6, 10-7, to take home their second title of the season – and Mattek-Sands’ third overall.
The win triggered a lengthy celebration from two of the tour’s biggest personalities, and even a revival of the Shaun T-choereographed dance the two debuted after winning in Melbourne.
Check out some the best photos from after the match right here, courtesy of the Volvo Car Open:
BIEL/BIENNE, Switzerland — Children attending the Ladies Open Biel Bienne over the weekend got to get a glimpse of two of their country’s biggest WTA stars, as Switzerland’s Belinda Bencic and Martina Hingis participated in the tournament’s Kids’ Day festivities, organized by Swiss Tennis.
The duo forms quite the Swiss trifecta on the WTA Tour alongside Timea Bacsinszky and held a youth clinic as part of the event ahead of Monday’s main draw.
Both players will face Carina Witthoeft in the first round of their respective tournaments, as the wildcard Bencic will face the German in singles while Hingis and Bacsinszky will square off against Witthoeft and Diana Marcinkevica in doubles.
All photos courtesy of Valeriano Di Domenico.
CLUJ-NAPOCA, Romania – 2014 French Open finalist Simona Halep had initially announced she would miss this week’s Fed Cup tie against defending champions in the Czech Republic due to a nasal infection that required surgery.
The World No.3 reversed that decision on Tuesday, declaring she will attempt to defend her title at the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships and play at the Qatar Total Open – a tournament she won two years ago – but first, she would indeed take part in a historic home tie for Romania this weekend:
Halep, in her own words on her decision to postpone nose surgery (translated by Adrian Toca/@treizecizero): pic.twitter.com/YpjaDkbUf9
— WTA Insider (@WTA_insider) February 3, 2016
Halep has been a Fed Cup stalwart throughout her career with an overall 12-6 record since 2010, and was instrumental in helping her country achieve World Group status for the first time since 1992. The process took two years for Halep, who played all five ties in 2014 just to qualify for World Group II, and helped lead Romania through a 3-2 win over Spain last February.
Flanked by teammates Monica Niculescu, Andreea Mitu, and Raluca Olaru, Halep will take on a Czech team that has won Fed Cup in four of the last five years, and led by 2015’s championship line-up in Petra Kvitova, Karolina Pliskova, Barbora Strycova and Denisa Allertova.
Check out Halep’s announcement on Facebook.
Angelique Kerber came into the 2016 Australian Open having never surpassed the fourth round at the Happy Slam. Two weeks later she left with the title, the No.2 ranking, and a great big smile.
The German had one of the toughest roads to a Grand Slam title in recent memory; in her first Australian Open quarterfinal, she dismissed former No.1 and two-time Australian Open champion Victoria Azarenka in straight sets; Kerber had never beaten Azarenka in six previous attempts and had lost to her in the finals of the Brisbane International to start the season. From there, she ended Johanna Konta’s fairytale run into the semifinals and put on a comprehensive performance in the final against World No.1 Serena Williams. Looking to stop the 21-time Grand Slam champion from tying countrywoman Steffi Graf’s record of major titles, Kerber did one better and became the first German Grand Slam titlist since Graf herself at the 1999 French Open.
“I think in these two weeks, it changed a little bit when I won against Azarenka,” she explained to WTA Insider. “I felt, ‘Ok, I can believe in myself.’ This is actually the only way to win a Grand Slam.
“That was the change that I made in the last few days, to go for it and believe in myself and be aggressive and not hope that someone will give it to me. That was also the key to winning the Australian Open.”
A small shift in mindset took Kerber far from the dangerous floater she once was when she burst onto the scene in 2011 to reached the semifinals of the US Open; it took her all the way to a career-high ranking and helped her become January’s WTA Player of the Month!
Final Results for January’s WTA Player Of The Month
1. Angelique Kerber (41%)
2. Serena Williams (28%)
3. Agnieszka Radwanska (21%)
4. Victoria Azarenka (10%)
2015 WTA Player of the Month Winners
October: Agnieszka Radwanska
September: Flavia Pennetta
August: Belinda Bencic
July: Samantha Stosur
June: Serena Williams
May: Serena Williams
April: Angelique Kerber
March: Serena Williams
February: Simona Halep
January: Serena Williams
How it works:
Four finalists are selected by wtatennis.com
Winner is then determined by a fan vote on wtatennis.com
MIAMI, FL, USA – Before heading off to Puerto Rico next week for her big Olympic welcome, Monica Puig made a stopover in her hometown of Miami for a quick cuddle with her new dog Rio and the first leg of her media whirlwind.
While in town the gold medalist, who made history for her country by becoming the first Puerto Rican athlete ever to win a gold medal hit Telemundo’s Miami studios for her first televised interview since her big win in Rio.
Telemundo time!!!! ☀️? pic.twitter.com/N6yf54AWBQ
— Monica Puig (@MonicaAce93) August 17, 2016
“I’m still super emotional,” Puig told the morning talk show Un Nuevo Día. “I don’t even know how to talk about it because I still feel like I’m living a dream.”
“It’s been a long year with a lot of sacrifices, but everything’s worked out well for me so I can’t complain.”
Puig also shared the meaning of her social media rallying cry, the hashtag #PicaPower. The tag comes from the saying “picar piedras,” meaning “to break rocks” and is Spanish slang for working long and hard at small tasks for small rewards.
“You’ve got to break a lot of rocks to accomplish what you want,” she said.
? Ya está en casita @MonicaAce93 #PuertoRico ??primera medalla de oro olímpica #Rio2016 #TelemundoRio ??? pic.twitter.com/FYiqp8PjU1
— Un Nuevo Día (@UnNuevoDia) August 17, 2016
Puig was joined on the show by Grammy-winning merengue singer Elvis Crespo, who surprised her by dedicating a rendition of the iconic song “Qué Bonita Bandera” to the island’s new national hero.
The singer even performed an ode to her Olympic feat to a merengue version of “La Borinqueña,” Puerto Rico’s official anthem, which was heard at the Olympics for the first time ever last week.
¡Emoción total! Mónica Puig, acompañada de su mami y Elvis Crespo. Esta mañana en @UnNuevoDia #HolaUSA #PicaPower pic.twitter.com/0vhXxCvnvF
— HOLA! USA (@USAHOLA) August 17, 2016
No.2 seed Carla Suárez Navarro kept up her momentum from Monterrey with a decisive win over American Julia Boserup to ease into the second round of the Ladies Open Biel Bienne.
Five Top 20 players are in action this week in two WTA events that are being staged for the first time.
Here’s 10 Things To Know about St. Petersburg and Kaohsiung!
1) St. Petersburg has four Top 20 players in the draw.
No.11 Belinda Bencic, No.16 Roberta Vinci, No.18 Caroline Wozniacki and No.20 Ana Ivanovic are all in action this week at the St. Petersburg Ladies Trophy.
2) This is the first edition of St. Petersburg Ladies Trophy as a WTA Premier event.
The event was previously held six times as an ITF tournament (from 2003-2008 and in 2015) and this year marks the first time in 25 years that WTA tennis returns to St Petersburg, Russia.
3) Bencic leads the pack in Russia…
For the first time in her career, Belinda Bencic is the No.1 seed at a WTA tournament at St. Petersburg. Her previous highest seeding was No.3 in Washington DC last year.
4) … While another 18-year-old is hoping to make big moves.
Daria Kasatkina is one to watch in St. Petersburg: She’s the second youngest player in the main draw and is coming off her joint-best result at a Grand Slam after reaching the 3rd round at the Australian Open, where she knocked out No.29 Anna Karolina Schmiedlova for the biggest win of her career.
5) Bencic and Wozniacki could face each other in the semifinals.
No.3 seed Caroline Wozniacki, who took a late wildcard into St. Petersburg, is on a semifinal collision course with Bencic, who beat her four times in 2015. See how the draw breaks down here.
6) A former World No.1 headlines in Kaohsiung.
And with 48 WTA titles to her name, No.1-seeded Venus Williams has more titles than the entire Taiwan main draw put together!
7) The Taiwan Open in Kaohsiung is the first WTA event in Taiwan.
Taiwan’s first taste of WTA tennis came back in 2012, with Taipei hosting a WTA 125K Series event from 2012 to 2015.
8) Elizaveta Kulichkova is one to watch.
Kulichkova enters the Taiwan Open following a string of career bests: at the Australian Open she reached the 3rd round of a Grand Slam for the first time and scored her career best win over No.25 Andrea Petkovic.
9) The Taiwan Open is one out of a record nine WTA Premier and International tournaments hosted on the Chinese Mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan…
The other eight are the China Open in Beijing, Dongfeng Motor Wuhan Open, Guangzhou International Women’s Open, Prudential Hong Kong Tennis Open, Jiangxi Women’s Tennis Open in Nanchang, Shenzhen Open, Tianjin Open and WTA Elite Trophy Zhuhai.
10) Check out all the best live action this week on WTA Live powered by TennisTV.
And learn how you can follow it all right here.
CINCINNATI, OH, USA – No.2 seed Angelique Kerber began her quest to become World No.1 in earnest on Wednesday, dispatching the always dangerous Kristina Mladenovic, 6-0, 7-5, to reach the third round of the Western & Southern Open.
Watch live action from Cincinnati this week on WTA Live powered by TennisTV!
“It wasn’t so easy to come to a tournament with just one or two days to prepare, and first rounds are always tough,” she told Andrew Krasny during her on-court interview. “But I was trying to play my game, and it’s so nice to be back in Cincinnati; I have great memories from the last few years, and the fans are amazing. It’s just so nice to be back here on the Center Court.”
Kerber arrived in Cincinnati fresh off her run to the final of the Olympic tennis event – where she became the first German woman since Stefanie Graf in 1992 to medal in tennis.
“It was really special, one of the really special weeks in my career so far. Winning a medal was a dream; when I was young, I was the Olympics at home and to go back home with a medal right now is an incredible feeling. I had an incredible week there.”
The World No.2 ultimately showed few showed few signs of fatigue against Mladenovic, who was playing her second match of the day after Tuesday’s rain interrupted her first round match against Kateryna Bondarenko. While both players hit 18 winners, it was Kerber’s consistency that won the day, with 20 unforced errors to 44 from the Frenchwoman, who was a game from forcing a deciding set before the German clinched the match in one hour and 15 minutes.
Up next for Kerber is the unseeded and looming World No.20 Barbora Strycova; the Olympic Bronze medalist in women’s doubles will be playing with Co-No.1 Sania Mirza for the first time this week in Cincinnati, but has been equally impressively in singles this season. Surviving a topsy-turvy first set against No.14 seed Samantha Stosur, Strycova saved a set point in the first set tie-break – and needing six of her own – to ultimately beat the Aussie, 7-6(11), 6-3.
Kerber leads their head-to-head 4-1 but the two have split their 2016 meetings and Strycova won their most recent encounter at the Mutua Madrid Open.
It’s an important week for the reigning Australian Open champion and Wimbledon finalist; should she win the Western & Southern Open title, she would end Serena Williams’ 183 straight weeks atop the WTA rankings and become the top seed at the US Open, the final Grand Slam tournament of the year.
.@AngeliqueKerber ❤️'s #CincyTennis fans! https://t.co/lO2TkF8k6G
— WTA (@WTA) August 18, 2016