Tennis News

Same name, same game? Not if you’re Daria Gavrilova and Daria Kasatkina, two of the most impressive young risers of the 2016 season.

Each have earned career-high rankings this year despite a fire and ice on-court contrast. Gavrilova’s boundless energy and big cuts at the ball have earned her big wins over Petra Kvitova and Simona Halep. Kasatkina’s steadier rise and smoother swings helped her begin the season by beating Venus Williams and Timea Bacsinszky.

Off the court, the pair are completely in-sync, finishing each others sentences and joking about everything from their first meeting on the singles court at last year’s US Open to their decision to play doubles this summer. Celebrate the one-year friendaversary of “The Dashas” – or Dasha and DashKa – courtesy of a chat with WTA Insider, held after their first round win over Gabriela Dabrowski and María José Martínez Sánchez:

Huge thanks to @CincyTennis for giving @DKasatkina and I a WC into doubles! pic.twitter.com/4nKfFodQtV

— Daria Gavrilova (@Daria_gav) August 15, 2016

On how they met…

GAVRILOVA: Well, I was meant to play Maria Sharapova…
KASATKINA: It’s a nice story! I got lucky loser.
GAVRILOVA: She got a lucky loser, and I only found out two hours before I was going to bed, and I was like, ‘Who is this girl?’ I had no idea.
KASATKINA: I knew her for a lot of years, and she didn’t remember.
GAVRILOVA: She was telling me that she and her brother both knew me.
KASATKINA: Short memory; it’s ok, Dasha!
GAVRILOVA: They were watching me when I was younger.
KASATKINA: Oh yes, we were big fans!
GAVRILOVA: After the French Open this year, we decided to play doubles together.
KASATKINA: No! I think at the end of the year, we’d already started talking about it…
GAVRILOVA: But at the time, I was set with Svitolina and she was playing with Vesnina. So we were thinking, ‘What are we going to do?’
KASATKINA: We started at Wimbledon.
GAVRILOVA: We did all right there.
KASATKINA: We did two rounds!

On becoming friends…

GAVRILOVA: First, we said hello to each other last year. After I lost to her, I came up and said, ‘Hey Dasha, good luck tomorrow!’ But she was so scared of me. She was shy.
KASATKINA: Because after the match, you went off the court and you started to scream at your coach.
GAVRILOVA: She was 18 and super new on tour. She was scared of everything…
KASATKINA: …And she was so experienced already.
GAVRILOVA: Our match was a big battle, and I had a few tough calls there.
KASATKINA: It was such big motivation for me; I had to take my chances.
GAVRILOVA: But I went up to her after the match because I’m kind of normal, I guess.
KASATKINA: And I was still under pressure, saying, ‘Thank you.’
GAVRILOVA: Now we practice more together with the doubles and stuff. But Montréal was our first singles practice. In Indian Wells, we still didn’t really know each other much. I don’t know when we started hanging out.
KASATKINA: I’m not sure either. Little by little.

@DKasatkina was very keen for some sushi ???? pic.twitter.com/aSeleaXKNm

— Daria Gavrilova (@Daria_gav) July 23, 2016

On whether they talk tennis…

KASATKINA: This year, I asked her what it’s like to defend points, because of Rome.
GAVRILOVA: I did all right there.
KASATKINA: You made it pretty good.
GAVRILOVA: But her coach is experienced, so he gives good advice.
KASATKINA: My coach, he is. He is.

On doubles strategy…

GAVRILOVA: Well, we know we’re good from the baseline…
KASATKINA: You mean good from behind?
GAVRILOVA: And at Wimbledon, it really works, you know, to just grind on the grass.
KASATKINA: Yeah, it really works. Spin the ball, kick serve.
GAVRILOVA: We probably do a lot more of standing across from each other at the baseline, more than other doubles teams.
KASATKINA: But now we’re starting to play more of a doubles game. More normal.

On beating doubles specialists in their first round…

GAVRILOVA: I’d played them at the French Open with Elina, so I kind of knew what to expect. Our coaches studied them a little bit. We knew what was coming, so we played to our strengths. Yesterday we practiced for two hours…
KASATKINA: Only doubles.
GAVRILOVA: We didn’t really have a chance to practice doubles. Before Montréal, we got a wildcard and didn’t have to do anything.
KASATKINA: Montréal? Cincinnati!
GAVRILOVA: Oh, Cincinnati, yeah.
KASATKINA: Before the Olympics, we didn’t play doubles because of that. So I played with a Russian player. Dasha had to play with Australian player.
GAVRILOVA: So in our first match Cincinnati, we didn’t know what was happening, or what to do.
KASATKINA: We played not so good.
GAVRILOVA: But now that we’re doing some doubles training, we’ll get our stuff together.

Dasha squared… love them! pic.twitter.com/T3BYQXXYp0

— James Peeling (@Moo_Tennis) September 1, 2016

On doubles helping singles…

GAVRILOVA: Well, after losing in the first round, we were really excited to be playing doubles!
KASATKINA: Hey, our singles matches were very good!
GAVRILOVA: No, we saw each other in the locker room. I think I finished just before her…
KASATKINA: I came into the changing room, and she was sitting, talking on the phone. I looked at her; she looked at me.
GAVRILOVA: We just gave each other a big hug.
KASATKINA: And time stops!
GAVRILOVA: We hugged for like 10 minutes, sitting there like, ‘Oh, man…’
KASATKINA: It was so bad, asking each other what happened in our matches.
GAVRILOVA: We were complaining like, ‘I worked so hard,’ and she was saying, ‘I did too.’ We didn’t talk about doubles though.
KASATKINA: We forgot about doubles.
GAVRILOVA: But we had dinner together – actually, she’d already had dinner, but we hung out after for a little bit.
KASATKINA: We had a little lemonade!
GAVRILOVA: We ordered lemonade, asking like, ‘There is no alcohol, right?’ So we had to have two lemonades.
KASATKINA: The lady comes and asks us what we want to drink; they had Sprite, and the lemonade.
GAVRILOVA: She told us it was French, and I was like, ‘It’s not champagne, right?’ They said no, and we were like, ‘Great!’

Follow Dasha on Twitter @Daria_gav, and DashKa on Twitter @DKasatkina.

NEW YORK, NY, USA – Andy Roddick has had a lot to say throughout the 2016 US Open.

The former ATP No.1 and 2017 International Tennis Hall Of Fame Nominee – alongside Kim Clijsters – partnered with Chase to launch the #MasterTheOpen series on Periscope, where he broadcasts his signature mix of incisive and humorous commentary live each day at the Open.

Weighing in on the upcoming women’s final between new World No.1 Angelique Kerber and Western & Southern Open champion Karolina Pliskova, the 2003 US Open champion had this to say:

Kerber vs. Pliskova women's finals analysis at the #USOpen pic.twitter.com/M4N1qRqwGh

— andyroddick (@andyroddick) September 9, 2016

Stay tuned for the Saturday’s final at 4pm EST / 9pm BST!

SINGAPORE – The Russian team of Ekaterina Makarova and Elena Vesnina has qualified for this year’s BNP Paribas WTA Finals Singapore presented by SC Global.

Makarova and Vesnina are set to make their third appearance as a team at the WTA Finals in Singapore. The pair reached the final on their debut appearance in 2013, and fell in the opening round in 2014. The Russians also qualified for the year-end event in 2015, but had to withdraw due to an injury to Makarova.

“Congratulations to Ekaterina and Elena on qualifying for the BNP Paribas Finals Singapore presented by SC Global,” said WTA CEO Steve Simon. “This team is a favorite in any tournament, and we are thrilled to welcome them back to Singapore.”

Makarova and Vesnina began their partnership in 2012 and together have won seven titles, including two Grand Slams at 2013 Roland Garros and 2014 US Open. This year the Russian duo began the year as a team at the Mutua Madrid Open in April, where they reached the semifinals. The pair continued their success by clinching back-to-back titles at the Rogers Cup in Montréal and the Gold Medal at the Rio Olympics. In addition, they reached two finals at the Internazionali BNL d’Italia in Rome and Roland Garros. As a result, they have earned the third slot in the doubles field at the WTA Finals Singapore.

“It’s definitely very exciting to qualify for the WTA Finals in Singapore,” said Vesnina. “It was our goal when we started playing, started winning matches and started winning good tournaments, we knew that we wanted to be there. We were there two years ago and we really liked it. Last year, unfortunately, we couldn’t go because of the injury. It’s an amazing tournament – we have some great memories from there and we’re really looking forward to being there.”

“The WTA Finals is such a great tournament – and for our first year when we came out on the court, it was a full stadium for doubles,” added Makarova. “It was so fun to play out there and the fans are so excited and supportive. The whole organization and the country, it’s nice to be there.”

The current Road to Singapore Leaderboard as follows (as of September 12, 2016):

TOKYO, Japan – Japan is a special place for longtime friends and rivals Caroline Wozniacki and Dominika Cibulkova. The two played their first junior match against one another in this very country all the way back in 2004.

Both have become mega-stars on the WTA tour since, but both have found time to give back on days like Monday, when the pair participated in a kid’s clinic at the Toray Pan Pacific Open.

Wozniacki and Cibulkova hit with a lucky group of children before posing for a group photo.

Cibulkova is the No.6 seed in Tokyo and plays her first match against Lucie Safarova; former No.1 Wozniacki opens against 2015 Tokyo finalist Belinda Bencic. Both play on Center Court on Tuesday.

All photos courtesy of the Toray Pan Pacific Open.

The introduction of Open Tennis in 1968 meant amateur and professional players could compete on the same stages – bringing an end to the hypocrisy of ‘shamateurism’ – but it didn’t do much for the women who played the sport. In fact, in the first couple of years the gulf in prize money offered to men and women only grew. Adding insult to injury, there were few opportunities for the women to shine on their own terms. Tournaments were joint but far from equal.

Matters came to a head in the summer of 1970, when Jack Kramer’s prestigious Pacific Southwest event proposed paying the men more than eight times as much as the so-called ‘fairer sex’ – even though the intended women’s field was packed with stars.

Enter Gladys Heldman, the savvy founder and publisher of World Tennis magazine. Devoted to the sport and a passionate advocate of the women who played it, Heldman counseled Billie Jean King, the powerbroker among the players, against a boycott of Kramer’s event. Instead, when Kramer would not budge on prize money, Heldman arranged for the Houston Racquet Club to host a women-only tournament.

Riding the winds of societal change, the initial $5,000 purse was to come from ticket sales to women’s groups associated with tennis in the city. Heldman also persuaded her friend Joseph Cullman III, an avid tennis fan and chairman of tobacco giant Philip Morris, to provide an additional $2,500 in return for naming rights for his Virginia Slims brand.

For the new Virginia Slims Invitational, Heldman set about recruiting players who signed weeklong $1 contracts with her company. More than just a symbolic act, this approach protected the tennis club from any lawsuit that might be launched by the tennis establishment.

Despite threats from the United States Lawn Tennis Association (USLTA) that they would be banned from competing at Grand Slams and lose their national rankings, nine women signed up: King, Rosie Casals, Nancy Richey, Judy Dalton, Kerry Melville Reid, Julie Heldman, Kristy Pigeon, Peaches Bartkowicz and Valerie Ziegenfuss.

They became known as the Original 9.

“I felt a sense of both fear and exhilaration,” recalled King, four decades on. “We knew we were making history and we had such a strong sense of purpose. I just kept thinking about the vision we had for the future of our sport. We wanted to ensure that any girl in the world that was good enough would have a place to go and make a living playing tennis.”

Any fears were not unfounded, for the rebels did suffer consequences: The two Australians in the group, Dalton and Melville Reid, were forced out of their national championships, for instance. Dalton – who would finish runner-up to Casals at Houston – was even prevented from using her Slazenger racquet for two years.

Still, so pleased was Virginia Slims with the Houston spectacle that its sponsorship skyrocketed; the resulting 21-event World Tennis Women’s Pro Tour offered a total prize purse of some $336,100 in 1971. It was a politically fraught time for the sport as a whole, with the USLTA mounting a rival circuit that relied heavily on the talents of the young Chris Evert and foreign stars such as Margaret Court, Evonne Goolagong and Virginia Wade.

Ultimately, though, the marketing savvy of Virginia Slims and the determined promotional efforts of the players saw the Slims roadshow win the PR battle. In 1973 the sport’s rival factions cast aside differences and the WTA was formed. For the first time, all of the top women would present a united front and the tour hasn’t looked back since: the 2016 edition of the WTA’s Road to Singapore will travel through 33 countries with 56 events, plus the four Grand Slam tournaments, players competing for more than $137 million in prize money.

“Today’s players are living our vision,” King said. “In 1970, and even a few years after we signed the $1 contract with Gladys, people never believed women’s tennis would be a global sport and that players would be making the money they make today. But it is a reality and I know today’s players will continue our dreams for future generations in tennis and inspire other women’s sports as well.”

— Adam Lincoln