The second week of April tennis has come to an end, and the main interest of fans of the game is concentrated at the first clay Masters in Monte Carlo (Monaco). However, the girls did not forget about themselves, playing the qualifying matches for the final tournament of the Billie Jean King Cup. It would not be possible without the Ukrainian team, which came together with the Czech team, one of the strongest teams in the world.
ATP 1000 Monte Carlo
Earth season opened at the Masters in Monaco. Yes, clay events were played in Estoril, Houston and Marrakech during the first week of April, but many top players missed these tournaments. It cannot be said that Monte Carlo also has the strongest squad, but at least here the first number of the ATP rating is Novak Djokovic, as well as last year’s champion of this tournament and also the third racket in the world – Stefanos Tsitsipas.
The Monte Carlo match was missed by the legendary Rafael Nadal (thigh injury after AO 2023), second male tennis player Carlos Alcaraz (arm and back problems) and Felix Auger-Aliassime (left knee problems). . These three top tennis players could clearly have strengthened the tournament, but even without them it turned out to be quite interesting. Seed leader Novak Djokovic was having problems at the beginning of the road with Ivan Gakhov, who was in the top 200 for the first time last week and went through without a flag. Djokovic, who went ahead 3-4 times with a timeout in the first set, won the tie-break and closed his opponent in the classification in the second set. It was clear that Novak wasn’t quite ready to show his best tennis on the court, and the courts at Monte Carlo were obviously unlucky for him (he only took the trophy twice here, the last time in 2015). In the 1/8 finals, Djokovic was penalized in three games by 21-year-old Lorenzo Musetti and avenged his defeat at Roland Garros in 2021 (Musetti later won the first two sets in tie-breaks, but was unable to continue playing at a physically high level and lost 3 matches in a row).
Getty Images/Global Images Ukraine. Lorenzo Musetti and Novak Djokovic
Interestingly, Musetti started playing in Monte Carlo from the 1/32 final and won 19 games in a row (7:6, 6:0 and 6:0, 6:0) with Kecmanovic before his fight against Djokovic began. with Luca Nardi). But then he lost to Jannik Sinner, who lost to Holger Rune in the semi-finals. From below the elbow, the long-suffering and overly emotional man “There is no war” / “Tsoi lives”, or rather Andrei Rublev, reached the final.
Rune and Rublev met in the title match. It all went to the fact that Holger won his second Masters at the age of 19 (he won the trophy at the Paris courts in 2022), but he was not destined to close Andrey with 4:1 * (40:30). third installment. Rublev won her first Masters in her career and confused the Princess of Monaco with the head of the Monaco Tennis Federation in her award speech. He admitted at least one mistake: “Sorry, I overheated in the sun. Maybe I’m a little stupid.”
What about last year’s winner of the Monte Carlo tournament – Tsitsipas? The Greek in the 1/4 final flew out of Taylor Fritz, who lost to the future winner Rublev in the semi-finals. However, Stefanos is not remembered for this. After defeating Nicholas Harry in the 1/8 finals, he wrote an interesting and possibly clear and far from logical statement to the camera: “Clay court in the USA is like a unicorn on a skateboard.” Well, the result is on the scoreboard – the same unicorn skipped him in the quarterfinals, or rather, wandered, still on a skateboard …
Billie Jean King’s Cup
The girls were distracted from the Tour and played games for their team. All attention was paid to the qualifying final, in which 9 matches were played, including the Ukrainian national team.
As in the United States a year ago, the Ukrainians could not perform a miracle and beat the favorites. This time our girls played for the Czech Republic national team, playing without former players Kvitova and Pliskova. Katerina Sinyakova, the first racket in doubles, did not come because of her injury, and the promising young Frugvirtov sisters missed the meeting. The composition of the Czechs, played by Barbora Kreychikova and Marketa Vondrousova, was already quite good. But Barbora is far from the best performing in national team matches, and Marketa slightly lowered the level of play after silver at the 2020 Olympics. In general, there were chances, but …
In addition to the rhetorical question “Why does not the first racket of Ukraine Angelina Kalinina play in the national team”, almost no flaws can be found in the composition of our team. Marta Kostyuk is an ambitious and young tennis player at the age of 20, who can rightly be considered the leader of the national team, Katarina Zawatskaya is a competent, experienced and interesting girl in terms of the game, she lost her level a little after the tournament. Fighting the coronavirus, but back in the Tour and trying to get the most out of your competition calendar. Dayana Yastremskaya and Lyudmila Kichenok were announced as a couple, but they never played. Why didn’t Diane replace Katarina in singles? Firstly, Dayana is clearly not in the best shape at the moment and secondly, questions about her schedule … she arrived at the tournament in Stuttgart on Saturday, which was supposed to start from the qualifiers. So on Saturday – the last day of the match. Everyone sets priorities for himself, by the way, it is clearly not necessary to judge and condemn, like Kalinin.
The first match between Ukraine and the Czech Republic was between Marta Kostyuk and Marketa Vondrousova. Frankly, Martha disappointed him (1:6, 2:6). Yes, it was not the best start and perhaps after this match it was clear that the chances of beating the Czechs were not enough. But still, Zavatskaya went to court against Kreychikova and squeezed her maximum out of herself. It’s a shame to lose (4:6, 3:6), but in a fight against a more experienced tennis player. After the first day the score was 0:2 and there was apparently nothing to catch.
But then Kostyuk beats Kreichikova. Feeling? Probably more yes than no despite a 2:1 score on PM. However, after our game against Marketa, our second racket had little chance of being revived. Still, she gave hope to the Ukrainian fans and everything was in Katarina’s hands. And it started well – 3:0 (40:15) on the Czech serve, but as a result, he lost 6 games in a row, and then a failure in the second game – 4:6. It’s a shame? Yes. Venerable? Also yes. Things aren’t as bad as they could be, so it’s not worth criticizing our girls here either. You have to prepare for tour matches, play, win, train and wait for the next chance to qualify for the Billie Jean King Cup final.
Getty Images/Global Images Ukraine. Martha Kostyuk
Besides the match between the Ukrainians and the Czechs, 16 more teams played their matches. Teams from Kazakhstan, Spain, France, Canada, USA, Italy, Germany and Slovenia won the winners. All of them won tickets to the final part of the competition.
The long-awaited victory of Svitolina
Former world number three and Ukrainian tennis legend Elina Svitolina made her debut in the ITF tournament in 10 years. Elina, 28, performed in a 60,000-meter unpaved race in Chiasso. She defeated Elena-Gabriela Ruse in the first round of the tournament with the scores of 6:4, 6:2 in two sets. For Svitolina, this victory was the first in a year. She went on maternity leave, announcing that she was expecting a baby in 2022. Elina returned to the Tour last week at a tournament in Charleston, where she lost to Putintseva in three sets.
Instagram. Elina Svitolina
Unfortunately, Svitolina did not reach the quarter-finals of the competition in Chiasso. In the 1/8 final, the Ukrainian faced Alexandra Ignatik. Svitolina won the first set but lost the second set. In the third installment, Elina managed to win 4 games in a row with a score of 1:3. He had one match point in his serve in the 9th match, but he could not convert it and lost the remaining 4 matches.
Sachko’s Failure
There are many questions about the game of Vitaliy Sachko, the former 1st racket of Ukraine. But in any case, all Ukrainian tennis fans expect good results from him. Vitaly went to Mexican Leon this week. Sachko focused on hard surfaces but has yet to show his best tennis.
Already at the beginning of the tournament, the 25-year-old Ukrainian failed in a match with Juan Pablo Fikovich. Yes, Fikovich finally reached the final, but why is Vitaly worse than this “earthworm”? Nothing, just experience. In any case, there is at least some progress in Sachko’s game, and it’s clearly worth believing him.
Belinsky Cup and successful performance of Starodubtseva
Ukrainian tennis player Vyacheslav Belinsky won the second cup in a row. But, unfortunately, so far as a couple. He won the championship with Swiss Damien Wenger in the 15,000th unpaved race in Antalya. 19-year-old Vyacheslav has won his third and second ITF doubles titles this season. At the end of March, the Ukrainian, together with his compatriot Alexander Ovcharenko, became the champion of the ITF M15 competition held in Croatia.
Instagram. Vyacheslav Belinsky and Damien Wagner
23-year-old Ukrainian Yuliya Starodubtseva played well this week. He performed in the American city of Boca Raton in the unpaved 25 thousand. Yulia started with qualifications and basically had pretty strong Americans Robin Montgomery and Ann Lee. Unfortunately, it was not possible to advance to the semi-finals, losing to future finalist Hailey Baptiste in the quarter-finals duel.
Order of Marta Kostyuk and Lyudmila Kichenok
The match between the national teams of Ukraine and the Czech Republic was commemorated not only by the good performance of our girls, but also by two other wonderful events. Marta Kostyuk and Lyudmila Kichenok announced their engagement to their boyfriends, or rather to their future husbands.
Lyudmila has been dating her coach Stas Khmarsky for a long time. The Ukrainian player posted a photo with a ring on his Instagram at the training camp before the match against the Czech Republic, and soon received congratulations from all members of our team.
He did not lag behind Kichenok and Kostyuk. Marta said in an interview with Sport.ua that the readers of our site were the first to know about her engagement. And so it was, Martha kept her word and made a short comment: “There was a mysterious engagement three weeks ago. Everything was great! It was dawn in Kiev, on Vladimirskaya Gorka. Martha’s mysterious stranger is named George. He used to play tennis and is now a finance trader.
