Daria Kasatkina: The Russian Tennis Superstar

daria kasatkina

Daria Kasatkina was born on May 7 1997, in Tolyatti, an industrial city located southeast of Moscow. She is a Russian professional tennis player.  Until now, she has 4 WTA singles and 1 WTA doubles title to her credit. Daria began playing tennis at the age of 6 at the insistence of her brother who thought she would excel at it.

When Kasatkina was eleven years old, Maxim Prasolov began coaching her. She later switched coaches to Damir Rishatovich Nurgaliev. In 2015, she moved to Slovakia to train at the Empire Tennis Academy, where she was coached by Vladimír Pláteník, this was followed by Phillip Dehaes. She is currently coached by Carlos Martinez. 

When it comes to playing style, Kasatkina is a baseline player. She employs a variety of shots including heavy topspin forehands, one-handed slice backhands, kick serves, and drop shots.

Biotable

Age 24
Height 1.70 mts
Nationality Russian
Turned professional 2014
Career titles 4
Highest ranking (Singles) No. 10
Current ranking (Singles) No. 21
Social media profile Instagram @kasatkina

Twitter @DKasatkina

Personal Information and Relationships

  • Daria was born in Tolyatti to Tatyana Borisovna and Sergey Igorevich Kasatkin
  • Both of her parents were nationally-ranked athletes in Russia with her mother in athletics and her father in ice hockey.
  • Kasatkina also has an older brother named Alexandr who is now her fitness trainer.

Career

  • Kasatkina began her professional career at the 2013 Kremlin Cup where she lost. However, she won her first career title in Egypt a few months later.
  • She began 2015 with a low ranking of no 354. In September 2015, she won the L’Open de Saint-Malo $50K singles event and In October, she won the doubles event at the Kremlin Cup with Elena Vesnina, thus enabling her to end the year ranked as no 72.
  • In 2016, She began the year at the Auckland Open, where she recorded her first career top-ten victory against world No. 7, Venus Williams. At the Qatar Open, she reached the doubles semifinals along with Elena Vesnina to defeat Martina Hingis and Sania Mirza thus ending their 41-match-win streak which was the longest streak on the WTA Tour since 1990. Kasatkina ended the season at a world ranking of No. 27
  • Kasatkina maintained a steady ranking throughout 2017, falling no lower than No. 42 in the world. At the Charleston Open, she won her first career WTA singles title.
  • She continued her success in 2018 as she reached the semifinals at the St. Petersburg Trophy and then the final at the Dubai Tennis Championships, at Indian wells, She finished runner-up to fellow 20-year-old Naomi Osaka. With this result, she climbed to No. 11 in the WTA rankings and also became the Russian No. 1, top women’s single player.
  • 2019 was not a good year for Daria. After beginning the year in the top ten, her ranking dropped down to as low as No. 70 near the end of the year. She finished 2019 with a losing record of 12–2.
  • In 2020, She reached the semifinal at Lyon where she defeated Pauline Parmentier, Irina Bara, and Camila Giorgi, before being defeated by Anna-Lena Friedsam. But due to her performance, Kasatkina’s ranking rose to No. 66.
  • Kasatkina started her 2021 season at the Abu Dhabi Open, where she defeated Wang Qiang. She also won over Veronika Kudermetova and Svetlana Kuznetsova and even defeated Margarita Gasparyan. These wins enabled her to be in the Top 50 for the first time. 

Prize Money Earnings

She has earned a total of around 7,522,591 US$ from her participation in different championships.

Endorsements and Sponsors

  • All of Daria’s clothes and footwear is sponsored by Adidas on the court.
  • She has a tennis racquet sponsorship by Artengo which is produced by Decathlon.
  • From 2017 to 2020, she was a brand ambassador for InstaForex, a forex trading company. 

Net Worth

Kasakina’s total net worth as of today is 5 million US$. Most of this income is from the WTA tournaments.

Trivia

  • Kasatkina’s favorite tennis players are Rafael Nadal, Petra Kvitová and Maria Sharapova.
  • Kasatkina loves football and her favorite team is FC Barcelona.
  • In the year 2021, she came out as bisexual.