{"id":193144,"date":"2025-10-06T10:31:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-06T10:31:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/193144\/"},"modified":"2025-10-06T10:31:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-06T10:31:10","slug":"daria-kasatkina-at-breaking-point-ends-tennis-season-early","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/193144\/","title":{"rendered":"Daria Kasatkina at &#8216;breaking point&#8217; ends tennis season early"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>MELBOURNE, Australia &#8212; Russia-born Australian tennis player <a href=\"http:\/\/www.espn.com\/sports\/tennis\/players\/profile?playerId=2191\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Daria Kasatkina<\/a> says she&#8217;s ending the season early for the sake of her mental wellbeing after hitting &#8220;breaking point&#8221; on tour.<\/p>\n<p>The 19th-ranked Kasatkina, a French Open semifinalist in 2022, said Monday she has been left drained by the constant travel on the tour schedule, a stressful process to gain permanent residency in Australia, and being unable to see her parents.<\/p>\n<p>Kasatkina, who is engaged to figure skating Olympic medalist Natalia Zabiiako, told the Times of London in 2023 that she can&#8217;t go back to Russia &#8220;as a gay person who opposes the war&#8221; in Ukraine.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Truth is, I&#8217;ve hit a wall and can&#8217;t continue. I need a break. A break from the monotonous daily grind of life on the tour, the suitcases, the results, the pressure, the same faces (sorry, girls), everything that comes with this life,&#8221; Kasatkina wrote on Instagram.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The schedule is too much, mentally and emotionally I am at breaking point and sadly, I am not alone.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>She added she plans to return in 2026 &#8220;energized and ready to rock&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Kasatkina said she had been &#8220;far from fine for a long time&#8221; and her results on court had suffered while she &#8220;kept a lid&#8221; on how she felt for fear of seeming ungrateful.<\/p>\n<p>She&#8217;s the latest in a series of players including <a href=\"http:\/\/www.espn.com\/sports\/tennis\/players\/profile?playerId=1797\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Elina Svitolina<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.espn.com\/sports\/tennis\/players\/profile?playerId=2028\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Beatriz Haddad Maia<\/a> who have opted to end their seasons early for extra rest.<\/p>\n<p>Kasatkina&#8217;s last match on tour was a straight-set loss to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.espn.com\/sports\/tennis\/players\/profile?playerId=7209\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Sonay Kartal<\/a> in the second round of the China Open on Sept. 27 and her last tour title was at the Ningbo Open in Oct. 2024.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MELBOURNE, Australia &#8212; Russia-born Australian tennis player Daria Kasatkina says she&#8217;s ending the season early for the sake&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":193145,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":{"0":"post-193144","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193144"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193144\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}