has issued a warm welcome in a new statement, released on Tuesday<\/a>.<\/p>\nThey wrote: \u201cRussian tennis player Polina Kudermetova has officially changed her sporting citizenship and will now represent Uzbekistan on the international stage.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe athlete\u2019s updated flag can already be seen on her profile on the websites of the International Tennis Federation (ITF) and the Women\u2019s Tennis Association (WTA).<\/p>\n
\u201cPolina Kudermetova is one of the most successful and rapidly improving ITF tennis players of recent years. She has won 10 ITF titles.\u201d<\/p>\n
Further in the statement, the Tennis Federation of Uzbekistan described the 22-year-old as \u201cstrongest representative\u201d of the new generation of Uzbek tennis, and called her nationality change \u201can important step\u201d to help develop women\u2019s tennis.<\/p>\n
It read: \u201cPolina won four trophies, winning the W25 Jerusalem, W25 Istanbul, W25 Raanana, and W15 Kazan tournaments, all on hard courts. She also previously won titles in Kazan and Antalya, demonstrating versatility and consistency on both hard and clay courts.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese victories confirm Kudermetova\u2019s status as the strongest representative of the new generation and make her a key boost to Uzbek tennis.<\/p>\n
\u201cKudermetova\u2019s move is a significant boost for Uzbek tennis. She is the fifth athlete to decide to compete under the Uzbek flag. Previously, Kamilla Rakhimova, Maria Timofeeva, Alexandra Barmicheva, and Laima Vladson changed their sporting citizenship.<\/p>\n
\u201cPolina Kudermetova\u2019s arrival marks an important step in the development of women\u2019s tennis in Uzbekistan and strengthens the national team ahead of major international competitions.\u201d<\/p>\n
World No 104 Kudermetova is now the second-ranked Uzbek player on the WTA Tour, behind world No 97 Rakhimova; world No 143 Timofeeva is third-ranked, and they are the only players representing the nation inside the top 800 of the WTA Rankings.<\/p>\n
Before she changed sporting nationality, Kudermetova was the Russian No 10.<\/p>\n
Read Next: Exclusive \u2013 What made Serena Williams, Maria Sharapova & Justine Henin so good? WTA star who played them reveals<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Tennis Federation of Uzbekistan has officially confirmed that Russian-born tennis star Polina Kudermetova will now represent the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":352185,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":["post-352184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352184","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=352184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352184\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/352185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=352184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=352184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=352184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}