{"id":624426,"date":"2026-04-22T22:18:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T22:18:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/624426\/"},"modified":"2026-04-22T22:18:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T22:18:10","slug":"daria-kasatkina-hits-world-ranking-low-after-early-madrid-open-exit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/624426\/","title":{"rendered":"Daria Kasatkina hits world ranking low after early Madrid Open exit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Daria Kasatkina’s career in Australian colours has plummeted to a new low at the Madrid Open after she suffered an agonising first-round defeat, which will send her tumbling to her lowest world ranking for 11 years.<\/p>\n

On a day when all four Australian women crashed out at the clay-court event, Kasatkina suffered the most frustrating defeat, succumbing 6-3, 3-6, 7-6 (15-13) to qualifier and lucky loser Daria Snigur after failing to convert four match points.<\/p>\n

Twelve months on since transferring her allegiance to Australian tennis amid much fanfare, the 28-year-old Russian-born star has found it difficult to maintain her best form amid a turbulent time in her life, and even took an early mark at the end of last year, admitting she was at “breaking point”<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Now, after suffering another hip injury that took two months out of her 2026 season, Kasatkina has returned to the court with two more defeats \u2014 and none more painful than Wednesday’s defeat to Ukrainian Snigur as she lost the longest regular third-set tiebreak in WTA events for eight years.<\/p>\n

Going down 6-3 3-6 7-6 (15-13) in the two-hour 23-minute battle, it must have been a hard one to take for Kasatkina, who had four match points repelled and also saved six of her own before hooking a forehand wide.<\/p>\n

The defeat left her with a record of four wins and eight losses for the season, and, having played her first match as an Australian last April when No.12 in the world and No.1 in the country, Kasatkina will now plummet to Australian No.5 and at least world No.83 in the next rankings \u2014 her lowest since 2015.<\/p>\n

ABC Sport Daily podcast<\/a><\/p>\n

ABC Sport Daily is your daily sports conversation. We dive into the biggest story of the day and get you up to speed with everything else that’s making headlines.<\/p>\n

She still must be trying to fathom how she lost this remarkable, entertaining match, having served for it at 6-5 in the final set when she earned her first match point.<\/p>\n

But world No.98 Snigur, a lucky loser playing her first career tour-level match on clay, proved inspired in thwarting her more experienced opponent, leaving the Aussie looking astonished when she pulled off one incredible backhand pass at full stretch when match-point down at 7-6 in the breaker.<\/p>\n

Kasatkina was not the only Australian luminary to tumble at the Caja M\u00e1gica venue, with the country’s No.2 Talia Gibson, breakthrough star of the hard-court swing in the US, finding the clay much more of a slog as she went down 6-3, 6-2 to Colombian Emiliana Arango.<\/p>\n

World No.85 Ajla Tomljanovi\u0107 lost to Hungary’s 117th-ranked Dalma G\u00e1lfi 7-6 (9-7) 6-4, while Kim Birrell also succumbed to Hungarian opposition in the shape of world No.78 Panna Udvardy 4-6, 1-6, 6-1.<\/p>\n

It is now down to the Australian men in Madrid, with Alex de Minaur, Alexei Popyrin and Adam Walton all ready for action in the main draw.<\/p>\n

AAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Daria Kasatkina’s career in Australian colours has plummeted to a new low at the Madrid Open after she…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":624427,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64302,64,63,32599,302095,71955,280666,85,52477,747,26599],"class_list":{"0":"post-624426","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-ajla-tomljanovic","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-daria-kasatkina","12":"tag-daria-snigur","13":"tag-kim-birrell","14":"tag-madrid-open","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-talia-gibson","17":"tag-tennis","18":"tag-wta-tour"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624426","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=624426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624426\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/624427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=624426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=624426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=624426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}