{"id":418992,"date":"2026-01-17T11:38:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-17T11:38:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/418992\/"},"modified":"2026-01-17T11:38:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T11:38:08","slug":"australian-open-2026-new-australian-daria-kasatkina-can-finally-breathe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/418992\/","title":{"rendered":"Australian Open 2026: New Australian Daria Kasatkina can ‘finally breathe’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Russian-born Daria Kasatkina says she can “finally breathe” as she prepares for her first Australian Open as a home player.<\/p>\n

Kasatkina has gained Australian citizenship in the build-up to the tournament, having played as a neutral athlete since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.<\/p>\n

The 28-year-old has not returned to Russia since coming out as gay in the same year, and has described the war in Ukraine as a “nightmare”.<\/p>\n

“Finally I can just breathe. I can live and just do my job and not be worried about the things which are not in my control,” said the former world number eight.<\/p>\n

“The last season was very, very tough. I was trying to get out of this hole basically.”<\/p>\n

Kasatkina ended her 2025 season early, having said in October<\/a> that “mentally and emotionally I am at breaking point”.<\/p>\n

She will begin her tournament against Czech teenager Nikola Bartunkova, and the new Australian number two will expect to receive huge support in Melbourne.<\/p>\n

“For the first time I’m going to play in front of such a big home crowd, so that’s going to be special,” Kasatkina said.<\/p>\n

“I have to manage my nerves, because I’ve never been in this situation before.<\/p>\n

“This is a good pressure, so I would choose this one compared to what I have been through in the past couple of years.<\/p>\n

“Now basically I’m going to play a home Slam and that’s a really special chapter in my life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Russian-born Daria Kasatkina says she can “finally breathe” as she prepares for her first Australian Open as a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":418993,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-418992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418992","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=418992"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418992\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/418993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=418992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=418992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=418992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}