How Tsurenko and Kalinina played in China, Hurkach’s championship, Kolb and StarYuli’s success

Another very eventful tennis week for women in October has come to an end. The girls played for trophies in Seoul, Hong Kong and Zhengzhou, and the men compete for the title at the penultimate Masters in China in 2023 (the thousandth event will be held in Paris from 30 to 5 October). Ukrainian tennis players and tennis players have managed to please their fans, but so far not at the WTA Tour level, only in the ITF…

WTA 500 Zhengzhou

The main tournament of the week is where all 3 Ukrainian women play in singles: Katerina Volodko, Lesya Tsurenko and Angelina Kalinina.

Katerina and Lesya started with the eliminations. Tsurenko quite confidently beat Uchijima and Eikeri, and Volodko unexpectedly beat both Rutliff and Yu Xiaodi.

Unfortunately, Volodko already in the 1/16 final met the future winner of the competition, Zheng Qingwen, who at the end of September became the champion of the 2022 Asian Games and lost to him, but fought back, gaining 7 points. games.

In the 1st round, Tsurenko defeated the 66th racket of Russia, Diana Schneider, and in the 1/8 final, she achieved victory with two tiebreaks from Donna Vekic. Lesya can certainly add this 500,000 meters to her credit, but the Croatian was not left without results after the marathon. In the quarter-finals, the 33-year-old Ukrainian player had to withdraw from the match against Barbora Krejcikova due to her injury. In the 1st set, Lesya called a physiotherapist to the field and complained about back problems.

During Lesya’s career, she was drawn 45 times before or during a match. There are a lot of back problems due to height, and added to this are knee injuries and the like. Still, Lesya demonstrates a good level of tennis and seems to be discovering a second youth.

Another representative of Ukraine in Zhengzhou was Angelina Kalinina. The Ukrainian started from the 1/16 final, confidently beating Ellen Perez, and then the former world second racket Vera Zvonareva, but against the attacker Volodko, Zheng Qingwen failed to show a good game.

Angelina was spotted on the field. Yes, the Chinese played in front of their fans, yes, they were higher in the rankings (although only 4 positions at that time), yes, it was a different tennis school and Asian, but Angelina was left behind only in terms of strength and quality.

However, Kalinina played in the quarter-finals for the first time in 4 months.

Getty Images/Global Images Ukraine. Angelina Kalinina

However, Angelina delighted the Ukrainian fans even more when she made her debut for the Ukrainian national team in the match against the Netherlands in the Billie Jean King Cup. A kind of replacement for Kostyuk. Let’s forget that Kalinina really wants to participate in the 2024 Olympics and for this she needs to play at least 2 matches in the national team…

Zheng Qingwen became the winner of the WTA 500 tournament in Zhengzhou. They have long been talking about the future of the Chinese woman, and now her ambitions have become even stronger with a second title.

WTA. Zheng Qingwen

This was Zheng’s third WTA tournament final. Starting from Monday, Qingwen will enter the top 20 in the world rankings.

Zheng managed to become so popular in China that he was invited to appear in a McDonald’s commercial. The secret to success? By the way, it turned out funny, sports nutrition…

The Kichenok brothers represented Ukraine in doubles, but unfortunately they did not play in the same tandem.

Nadezhda, along with Monica Niculescu, lost in the 1st round to Brazilian duo Ingrid Martins / Luisa Stefani.

Lyudmila performed better, but not as much as we would have liked… Kichenok and former world number one doubles player Timea Babos initially defeated Melichar/Perez in three sets and lost to the Russians Samsonova and Kudermetova. In the 1/4 finals, match points could not be converted in the final tiebreaker.

WTA 250 Seoul / WTA 250 Hong Kong

There were no Ukrainian women in Seoul. More precisely, tennis players with Ukrainian passports. Alena Ostapenko, whose father Evgeniy Ostapenko is a former Ukrainian football player and currently plays under the Latvian flag, was sensationally defeated by the world’s 569th racket, Da Yong Bak, without even converting a match point.

Alena took second place and was one of the few who could challenge Jessica Pegula. As a result, the American, who was the first seed, went through the classification calmly, losing only 1 set to her compatriot Claire Liu, and won the fourth championship in her career and the second championship this year.

Getty Images/Global Images Ukraine. Jessica Pegula

Dayana Yastremskaya performed in Hong Kong. This is a failure. Consistency is a sign of mastery. Officially, Dayana defended her title in Hong Kong since the tournament was last held in 2018, when the Ukrainian won the trophy, but they could not deduct points from her if her defense failed.

Already in the 1st round, Yastremskaya lost in two sets to 16-year-old Mirra Andreeva, who did not raise her hands on the table in the swamps, although there was nothing special about her. More precisely, in his game. For example, Leila Fernandez, who won the championship after losing the first set to Andreeva, crushed her with her quality, finishing the next two sets with scores of 6:1 and 6:3.

The Canadian player was not in form throughout the year, but starting from Guadalajara he started to show good results. For Fernandez, this cup was the first of the season and the third in his career. Let’s remember that Fernandez reached the final of the US Open in 2021, after which there was a slight decline. Although what can we say about Emma Raducanu if she gets the American major…

Getty Images/Global Images Ukraine. Leila Fernandez

ATP 1000 Shanghai

The long-awaited Masters in Shanghai, where just a few years ago Federer, Djokovic and Murray performed magnificently, did not please with numerous tops in the final stages. Novak missed the tournament and it looked like only Jannik Sinner could stop Carlos Alcaraz, but then Grigor Dimitrov took a place in the 1/8 finals.

Meanwhile, Sinner was also eliminated by Ben Shelton at this stage. Neither Shelton nor Dimitrov ultimately made it to the semifinals.

Hubert Hurkacz and Andrey Rublev competed for the cup. The Pole lost a match point in a third-set tiebreak, then dismissed the Russian, who broke his racket in anger on the 18th point. In fact, the “fall of the ruble”…

For Hurkacz, it was his third Masters final and second victory. He won in Miami in 2021.

Getty Images/Global Images Ukraine. Hubert Hurkacz

Final Molchanov, Ursu and Bergen

Denis Molchanov had every chance to win the Challenger cup in Bratislava. The 36-year-old Ukrainian played alongside Andrey Golubev in the doubles final at a tournament in Slovakia, where he lost to Srirambalay Narayanaswamy (India) / Andre Begemann (Germany) in three sets.

For Molchanov, it was the 66th final match of his professional career and he competed for the 38th trophy.

Instagram. Andrey Golubev and Denis Molchanov

Vadim Ursu also performed well this week. The Ukrainian player played in the final of the 15,000-person tournament held in Sharm el-Sheikh and lost to Philipp Hening in two matches.

Ursu, 26, made her fourth ITF singles final and challenged for her second title. The Ukrainian player reached the final of a professional tournament for the first time since 2018. Vadim Ursu has not competed on the professional tour since the end of 2020 and only returned in August of this season.

Maria Bergen also received the “silver medal” (if you can call it that). The 22-year-old Ukrainian could not win the cup in the 15 thousand doubles race with Ksenia Bandurovskaya in Monastir.

Bergen played in the doubles final of an ITF tournament for the seventh time and was fighting for his first title.

Belinsky Prize

Ukrainian tennis player Vyacheslav Belinsky won the doubles cup at the ITF W25 series clay tournament in Telavi (Georgia).

In the final, the Ukrainian player and his partner Ilya Snitsar (Moldova) defeated the Romanian duo Vladei Andrei Dumitru / Nicolas David Ionel in two sets. 19-year-old Belinsky won the 4th championship of his career in doubles. Won all 4 cups in 2023.

How did Sachko and Molchanov perform in Bratislava?

Ukraine’s first racket, Vitaly Sachko, played with 2nd-ranked Dominic Thiem in the 1st round in Bratislava.

The Ukrainian lost to the US Open 2020 champion and former number two in the ATP rankings in two sets, again forcing the fight (6:7, 3:6). Sachko met Tim at the start of the 500,000th race in Vienna in 2020. Vitaly then lost both matches (4:6, 5:7).

Ilya Marchenko found a second young man. At the age of 36, Marcello lost some weight and performed well in Bratislava. Ilya started by beating Evgeniy Karlovsky and former Pole Kasper Zhuk in qualifying.

At the beginning of the main round, Marchenko did not slow down and knocked out Denis Novak, and in the 1/8 final he took the victory from Norbert Gombos. If we take the conditional Alexei Krutykh and put him in such a grid, it is unlikely that our second number will perform like this. Ilya could have reached the semi-finals, but in the quarter-final match against Joris De Loore, with a break in the third set leading 4:3, he could not take advantage of this chance and eventually lost in the tiebreak.

Cup Kolb

Sisters Nadezhda and Marina Kolb continue to delight their Ukrainian fans.

Ukrainian tennis players won the cup at the ITF W25 clay tournament held in Seville (Spain), beating the first place in 48 minutes in the final.

For Nadezhda and Marina Kolb, this was the fifth final of this season. They became the champions of the ITF W15 tournament held in Gdansk, Poland at the end of June, advanced to the final on clay in the Czech Frydek-Mistek (ITF W25) on September 9, and played for the cup on September 15. They fought for the title at Le Nebourg and on September 30 in Santarem.

We hope that in the near future we will see Kolb in tournaments of the WTA 125 category or higher, because the rating allows it! They are already ranked 293rd in the WTA doubles rankings.

Starodubtseva’s titles

Star, there is no other way! Yulia won the 4th championship of her career, or rather the 4th championship of the season, because she started playing on the professional tour for the first time in 2023.

This week the 23-year-old Ukrainian won the 60K in both singles and doubles in Rancho Santa Fe. By the way, he now has 3 doubles titles.

In the WTA rankings, Yulia is already in 175th place – this is her new personal record.

Svitolina Jr.’s birthday

On October 15, the future of Ukrainian tennis turned 1 year old! Elina Svitolina and her husband Gael Monfils celebrated the birthday of their daughter Sky, who turned 1 year old.

Exactly a year ago, Svitolina gave birth to a child, and everything that happened after her return to tennis is now history.

“Happy first birthday to the sweetest girl. May your day be filled with laughter, joy and lots of cake. You bring so much happiness to our lives and we are grateful for every moment we spend with you. I wish you many years full of love, happiness and endless adventures. We love you more than words can express. Happy birthday, our precious angel,” Elina wrote on Instagram.

“My heart is full of emotions as Sky celebrates her first birthday today. Every moment I spend next to you reminds me of how lucky I am to have you. Your smile, laughter and even tears added a unique color to my daily life. You truly enlightened and changed my world. I wish for you, my little jewel, all the happiness imaginable and all the miracles that life can bring. “Happy first birthday my little princess,” Gael wrote.