Three Russian women competed for a place in the semi-finals at the WTA-500 tournaments in Bad Homburg and Eastbourne on Thursday 27 June. Diana Schneider, Anna Blinkova and Daria Kasatkina played their matches that day.
As on the previous day, Diana Schneider (47) played her first start in Bad Homburg and in the quarterfinals she faced Paula Badosa (113). The tennis players met for the fifth time: previously the score in their confrontation was 3-1 in favor of the Spaniard. The girls played three times this year and two of those matches ended with Badosa winning.
The tennis players played a good wrestling match today. From the first matches, both played at high speeds, advancing or hitting hard from the baseline. But already in the third game the girls made unforced errors, so they exchanged breaks. And yet, Badosa sometimes made more inaccuracies; After losing points, she would raise her hands and talk to the boxer. Paula tried to play with Schneider’s backhand, but although the Russian made mistakes on this shot, she remained stable in other components of the game. This helped him overcome the first set in 44 minutes and with a score of 6:3.
Diana Schneider
Photo: Cameron Smith/Getty Images
During the break between matches it started to rain, the match was stopped and the players were able to return to the court almost an hour and a half later. Upon her return, Badosa returned her first serve. The Spaniard stabilized only in the middle of the second set, when she was able to force the Russian with powerful shots, surprise her with errors and win three games in a row with a break.
Badosa played well, adjusted her serve, began to manipulate the balls a little earlier and thus caused Schneider a lot of trouble. Diana had to fight with herself and adapt to her opponent’s resistance in order not to lose control of the game and not to give up this set, which rightly went into a tie-break. The tennis players continued to fight actively, but four times, at the most inopportune moment, Paula made completely unnecessary mistakes, and the Russian won this match in 1 hour 47 minutes and with a score of 6:3, 7:6 (3 ).
Schneider reached the semifinals of a WTA-500 tournament for the first time in her career. She will compete for a ticket to the final with Emma Navarro, and at the end of the competition she will get at least 41st place, her highest position in her ranking. If she wins in Bad Homburg, Diana could break into the top 30.
Another Russian, Anna Blinkova (66), finished the second round match with Beatrice Haddad-Maya (20). On Wednesday, June 26, the match with a score of 6:3, 2:3 was interrupted by rain and darkness. At that time, the Russian tennis player continued to confidently hold her serve and did not allow her opponent to attack, and the Brazilian athlete began to play and still find ways of active actions.
The continuation of the match, as it seemed at the beginning, was supposed to be a combative one. Haddad-Maia immediately took the lead with a break and went out to serve for the set with the score 5:3, but she could not withstand the game and psychological pressure of Blinkova. Anna managed to win five games in a row, she was on the court for only half an hour and also thanks to her own bold game and the mistakes of her opponent she completed this match (6:3, 7:5). In the quarterfinals, the Russian had to play with qualifier Victoria Tomova (58). Their match was scheduled for the same day as the last shot.
The meeting with Tomova was the first in her career for Blinkova; Before the quarterfinal match with the Russian, Victoria went through qualifying and victories over Tatyana Maria and Linda Noskova.
Blinkova successfully started the fight for the semi-finals with a pause and active actions. When Anna started to pick up the pace, when the score was 3:2, 40:15, it started raining on her serve and the match was interrupted. After 20 minutes, the match continued and the set almost immediately ended with a score of 6:2 in favor of the Russian. Anna makes high-quality attacks and serves cleanly: in the first set, Blinkova won 79% of points in the first set and 60% in the second. For Tomova, these figures were 50% and 45%, respectively.
Anna Blinkova
Photo: Paul Harding/Getty Images
In the second set, Victoria improved significantly: she bombarded the Russian with aces on her serve, and on the return she found an answer to everything Anna threw at her. Tomova showed incredible courage and finished the match in just 25 minutes with a score of 6-1. Now the statistics are in favour of the Bulgarian tennis player: Victoria won 76% of the points on her first serve and 75% on her second, while for Anna these figures were 44% and 33%.
The decisive set was very difficult for both players: Tomova kept adding points at will, and Blinkova seemed to play with her last physical strength and make unusual mistakes. Anna had to make incredible efforts to bring the match to a tiebreak. Blinkova had five match points, but did not use any of them. Tomova eventually finished the match with a score of 2:6, 6:1, 7:6 (9) and advanced to the semifinals against Donna Vekic.
In Eastbourne, of the Russians, only Daria Kasatkina (14) remained on the grid. She faced 2021 US Open champion Emma Raducanu (168) to reach the semi-finals. Both tennis players played three-set matches in the previous round. But if the Russian completed the match with Yuan Yue in 1 hour 52 minutes (3:6, 6:4, 6:0), then the British tennis player had to fight with Jessica Pegula for 2 hours 44 minutes (4:6, 7 :6, 7:5).
This was the second meeting between Kasatkina and Raducanu. The players met for the first time in 2022 in Ostrava on hard courts. The Russian then won (7:5, 6:4).
In today’s match, Raducanu played an excellent first game with her serve, but immediately after she lost concentration, lost five games in a row and gave the set to the Russian (6-2). At that time, Kasatkina tried to play reliably, wait somewhere for her opponent’s inaccuracies and attack only from a convenient position. As a result, in the first series of unforced errors, Daria made eight, and Emma 18.
Today, the strong wind caused discomfort to the tennis players and forced Kasatkina, who was at the beginning of the second set with a break, to commit several double faults and a failed play on her serve. The Russian played imperfectly, she did not use all of her powers, so she periodically made critical mistakes. But not even they stopped Daria from finishing this match in her favor from the first match point (6-2, 6-2).
Now Kasatkina will continue her quest to defend last year’s final with a semi-final meeting with Yasmine Paolini. Follow all the developments in Bad Homburg and Eastbourne in the “Championship”.
