Exhale in Doha: Anna Kalinskaya beat two top tennis players in Qatar

Russian tennis players, with the exception of Anna Kalinskaya, performed poorly this week. Daniil Medvedev fought with the referee at the Rotterdam tournament and once again lost to Hugo Humber, who becomes an evil genius for the US Open champion. Mirra Andreeva failed to implement a matchball against Victoria Mboko at the Doha Super Tournament and is now preparing to defend her title in Dubai in a bad mood. Kalinskaya, for the fourth time in her career, reached the 1/4 finals of the "thousandth".

Tears of Myrrh, an important victory for Kalinskaya

Eight Russians started in the main draw of the super tournament in Doha. Unfortunately, most of them failed to show their high level. Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, Anastasia Zakharova, Lyudmila Samsonova, and Diana Schneider were eliminated in the first round. Vera Zvonareva and Ekaterina Alexandrova are in the second. The latter played a lot of matches at the previous tournament in Abu Dhabi, where she reached the finals in singles and doubles, so Ekaterina's defeat against 2017 Roland Garros champion Elena Ostapenko from Latvia was predictable. Of our participants, only Anna Kalinskaya and Mirra Andreeva overcame the stage of the 1/16 finals.

Mirra is preparing to defend her title in Dubai (the tournament will be held from February 15 to 21), so it was important for her to perform well in Qatar. In her first match, Mirra passed the experienced Magda Lynette, but on Wednesday, February 11, she lost in the battle of prodigies to Victoria Mboko. The defeat against the 19-year-old Canadian turned out to be painful: in the decisive set, with the score 5:4, the Russian missed the matchball and did not serve for the match. Mboko, in turn, scored her third victory over the top 10 and reached the quarterfinals of the thousandth round for the second time. The Russian woman left the court in tears.

"Andreeva didn't look bad," Andrei Olkhovsky, a two—time winner of Grand Slam tournaments in mixed doubles, said in an interview with Izvestia. — A very close score. But, of course, when serving for a match and in a tie-break, when you have to play flawlessly, you can't make so many unforced errors. In my opinion, Mirra lacks tenacity at a crucial moment: some mistakes come out, due to which her opponents take the matches. Maybe it's psychology.

But Kalinskaya was a success at the tournament. She beat Jessica Bousas Maneiro fairly easily in the first round, and passed 12th seed Emma Navarro in the second round. Next, the Moscow native faced a serious challenge in the person of the seventh seed, the semifinalist of the recent Australian Open, Elina Svitolina. Firstly, the Ukrainian won all the previous three face-to-face meetings, and secondly, Svitolina has been playing very well against the Russians lately. However, this time Kalinskaya closed the match in two sets without question (she beat a top-10 player for the 14th time) and reached the quarterfinals of the thousandth round for the fourth time in her career. In the live rating, Anna rose four positions and returned to the top 25.

She will compete with Karolina Mukhova for the right to play in the semifinals.

Are two better: how Alexandrova won the title in Abu Dhabi

The Russian woman returns to the top 10 of the world ranking and wins a long-awaited victory in a pair

A bad trip

Russian tennis players failed to show their full strength at the Australian Open in January. Karen Khachanov lost to Luciano Darderi in the third round, Andrey Rublev was weaker than Francisco Serundolo at the same stage. Daniil Medvedev went one lap more, but in the fourth round in three sets he "burned out" Lerner Tien.

The 2021 US Open champion admitted that he had not been outplayed like this for a long time, and the head of the FTR, Shamil Tarpishchev, complained about the hip injury of the country's first racket. In early February, Daniel posted photos from training sessions in Monaco, and there he also had his left hip bandaged.

It was expected that Medvedev would skip the Rotterdam tournament and would purposefully prepare for Doha. However, our athlete still played in the Netherlands, but it would be better not to do it. In the first round, he lost to Hugo Humber (in a personal confrontation, the score was 4:1 in favor of the Frenchman) and swore a lot with the referee because of the poor quality of the balls.

"We shouldn't play with them, we shouldn't buy them or advertise them,— Medvedev complained to the supervisor. "They're anything but round." It's three games before the balls change, and they don't look like anything anymore. I came to play tennis, but it's not tennis.

Now Medvedev needs to regain his strength before the tournament in Qatar, where he won the title in 2023. Last year, the former world number one reached the quarterfinals in Doha, losing to Felix Auger-Alliassim.

The current champion is Andrey Rublev. Last year, our compatriot beat Alexander Bublik, Nuna Borges, Alex de Minaur, Auger-Alliassim and Jack Draper in turn. It won't be easy for Andrey to defend his title. He's not in the best shape right now. Rublev decided to skip Rotterdam and purposefully prepared for Qatar. Hopefully, this will play into his hands.

Karen Khachanov decided to act according to Medvedev's plan. In the Netherlands, he beat Jesper De Jong, but was unexpectedly eliminated by Jaume Munyar in the third round. Now we need to rehabilitate ourselves in Doha, where Yannick Sinner, Carlos Alcaraz, Bublik, Auger-Alliassim and Stefanos Tsitsipas will be in the application. The cast is extremely stellar, but who will eventually come to Qatar is a mystery.

After Doha, our tops are scheduled to play in Dubai (February 23-28). In addition to the Russians and the current champion Tsitsipas, Auger-Alliassim, Bublik, Draper (who has not performed on the tour since August) and Hubert Hurkach confirmed their participation.