Athletistic / Tennis. One week before the start of the Grand Slam clay court tournament, Roland Garros, tennis players, as tradition dictates, are getting closer and closer to the French capital. The Strasbourg tournament helps them.

Although the competition is of a fairly high category – WTA-500 – it is actually considered an achievement competition. Many world tennis leaders decide to give themselves a week of rest before the Roland Garros marathon, and therefore few were surprised that in 2024 only Czech Marketa Vondrousova came to Strasbourg from the top 10 of the WTA ranking.

But for some tennis players, this tournament is much more important, because it is the last attempt to play on clay before the start of the TBS in Paris. One of these tennis players is Russian Anna Kalinskaya. The strongest Russian at the 2024 Australian Open, who reached the quarter-finals in Melbourne, still cannot find herself on clay. Anna’s main problem on clay is difficult to pin down, as she actually avoids that surface. For example, in 2023, she only played 10 matches on clay. Interestingly, Kalinskaya found this too much, so the match in the first round of the tournament in Strasbourg with China’s Xinyu Wang became only the fifth match on clay for the Russian in the 2024 season.

The history of meetings between Wang and Kalinskaya was rare – only one match. This happened in February 2022 at a tournament in Guadalajara (Mexico), where Anna was stronger in three sets (fortunately, in Guadalajara the girls played on hard court).

Photo source: Roland Garros press service

From the start of the match, Kalinskaya began to bury herself in the sand, making a large number of mistakes. The best illustration of this is his two double faults in the first game of the match. As a result, the Chinese took advantage of the gift and took the Russian’s service. But Anna pulled herself together and from the score of 0:2 until the break, she brought the score to 3:2 in her favor. It seemed that a turning point was coming in the match and now Kalinskaya would quickly take the affair to victory in the first set. But it wasn’t there. Wang simplified her game and allowed Kalinskaya to make many mistakes. Well, luck was on the side of the representative of the Celestial Empire. As a result, the first set, reminiscent of a swing, ended with Wang’s victory with a score of 6:4. The tennis players were waiting for the second match, where Kalinskaya no longer had any room for error.

The second set started cautiously – each tennis player took their serve (not without difficulty). Kalinskaya needed a shakeup that would give her a fresh start. And, we must give Anna her due, she managed to shake herself off, doing it in an unusual way for herself: the Russian woman began to get angry and throw negative emotions outward . Interestingly, it was difficult to understand from the broadcast what exactly made Kalinskaya boil, but at one point Anna even began to scold her opponent for her mistakes. Regardless, it immediately helped Kalinskaya, because in the fifth game of the second match she took a break. Fracture? But no… From the next game, Anna again made two doubles in a row and allowed her opponent to close the gap.

Photo source: WTA

Then the girls simplified their game and relied on their serve. This all brought us to a tiebreaker. At the decisive moment of the match, Anna again began to make careless mistakes and could do nothing to oppose her opponent. The result was a straight set defeat with a score of 4:6, 6:7 (3-7).

Russian tennis fans have no reason to be optimistic after this match. With such a match, it is practically useless for Kalinskaya to go to the French Open. If his play on clay has become more confident, then the number of errors all this multiplies by zero. I wish Anna patience and a quick start to the grass season, and then a continuation of the difficult season.

Nikita Serbakov, Athletistic



Athletistic