Former Credit One Charleston Open champion Daria Kasatkina's 6-1, 6-1 second-round defeat of wild card Lauren Davis wasn't just the start of her 2025 tournament, but the beginning of a new career chapter playing for Australia.
Charleston: Draws | Scores | Order of play
Kasatkina has been playing as a neutral since 2022, when players from Russia and Belarus were barred from national representation following the invasion of Ukraine. Last week, she announced that she had gained permanent residency in Australia and would henceforth play under that country's flag.
Ahead of Charleston, where she won her maiden Hologic WTA Tour title in 2017, No. 5 seed Kasatkina said that her sexuality had been a deciding factor. In 2023, the Russian government designated what it termed the "international LGBT movement" as "extremist."
"With everything that's going on in my previous country, I didn't have much choice," Kasatkina told Ben Rothenberg at Bounces. "Because for me, being openly gay, if I want to be myself, I had to make this step."
No. 12-ranked Kasatkina was in full flow both during and after her first match as the Australian No. 1, sixty places ahead of the country's No. 2, Kimberly Birrell at No. 62. She needed just 61 minutes to race past home hope Davis, then laughed and joked her way through an on-court interview with Andrew Krasny.
"I couldn't handle my smile, even though I was a bit stressed before the match," she told Krasny. "Stepping on court with the new status, with the new flag, it was quite stressful. I had this little baggage of the nerves, and it always explodes as soon as you step on court. I'm happy I was able to handle that."
As she was roundly applauded by the crowd and high-fived by Krasny, Kasatkina's smile grew even bigger as she thanked them all for their support.
"It's been a tough couple of years, so I'm really happy to stand here and feel like that," she said.
Ostapenko, Shnaider lead fellow seeds into last 16
Kasatkina wasn't the only seeded player opening her Charleston campaign with a straight-sets win on Wednesday.
- No. 6 Diana Shnaider finished her match one minute after Kasatkina, dismissing Polina Kudermetova 6-3, 6-2 in 62 minutes. Shnaider improved to 2-1 overall against Kudermetova, having also defeated her in the first round of Hamburg 2023.
- No. 9 Ekaterina Alexandrova dropped just six points behind her first serve en route to defeating Ann Li 6-3, 6-0 in 1 hour and 18 minutes. Alexandrova enjoyed an eight-match winning streak in February, claiming the Linz title and then reaching the Doha semifinals -- but then promptly went a four-match losing streak through the Sunshine Double, only snapping that here.
- No. 11 Jelena Ostapenko also shone in Dubai by making the final, before dropping four matches in a row. The Latvian -- runner-up in Charleston to Kasatkina in 2017 -- snapped her own losing streak 7-5, 6-2 over qualifier Louisa Chirico. The last time Ostapenko faced Chirico was in the first round of Roland Garros 2017 -- a tournament she went on to win.
- No. 14 Anna Kalinskaya overturned a break deficit in the second set against qualifier Caty McNally to move through 6-1, 6-4 in 1 hour and 15 minutes.
