Daria Kasatkina lifted her first title in over two years at the Phillip Island Trophy with a 4-6 6-2 6-2 win over Marie Bouzkova after 1 hour and 55 minutes.
Kasatkina hit 35 winners to 25 unforced errors to claim her first title since Moscow 2018. In the same year she reached her first two Grand Slam quarter finals at Roland Garros and Wimbledon and two finals in Dubai and Indian Wells to break into the top 10 of the WTA Ranking for the first time in her career. The Russian player dropped to world number 69 after a tough 2019 season, in which she scored a 13-21 win-loss record.
Kasatkina reached her first semifinal in Lyon since 2018 before the covid-19 shutdown and has scored a record of 18 wins to 6 defeats since the Rome Internazionali BNL D’Italia last September.
Bouzkova was very tired after winning her marathon semifinal match against Bianca Andreescu in more than hours.
“It feels incredible, to be honest. I felt like one big bagpack with stones got out from my shoulders. I was struggling with a lot of things. Mentally I was having problems, like I was not confident in myself. I was losing matches and everyhing, was just going like a snowball all together. Things were just going down. It took a lot of time to rebuild my game, to rebuild my confidence, to change myself. Finally I am feeling good”, said Kasatkina.
Ankita Raina from India and Kamilla Rakhimova from Russia claimed the doubles title with a 2-6 6-4 10-7 win over Anna Blinkova and Anastasia Potapova in the doubles final. Raina becomes the second Indian player after former doubles World number 1 Sania Mirza to claim a WTA doubles title.
