Daria Kasatkina admitted that the conditions were causing her problems at the start of her Abu Dhabi match against Jil Teichmann, but then she adjusted and turned the game around completely. The No.1 seed Kasatkina had a first round bye in Abu Dhabi before meeting Teichmann in the round of 16.
Kasatkina had a very difficult start to the match as Teichmann easily won the first set before the Russian came back to win 1-6, 6-0, 6-2. «In these harsh conditions with the wind, as soon as you lose concentration a bit the game can change completely, and this is what happened at the beginning.
I was a bit lost with the lights, with the wind, but then I found a way to play safer,» Kasatkina said, according to the WTA website.
How Kasatkina beat Teichmann
Teichmann, who entered the match as the underdog, began the match with back-to-back breaks and a 4-0 lead.
In the fifth game, Kasatkina had her first two break points of the match, but went unnoticed as Teichmann opened up a 5-0 lead. After losing the first five games of the match, Kasatkina finally got on the board after bringing out the sixth game to cut the deficit to 5-1.
Not much changed, however, as Teichmann routinely served for the first set in game seven. After easily losing the first set, Kasatkina looked like a completely different player in the second set, as she broke Teichmann three times and didn’t face a single break point.
In the third set, Kasatkina was twice up by a break but Teichmann rallied twice. But after Teichmann broke Kasatkina in the fifth game to cut the deficit to 3-2, the Russian responded by earning her third break of the set in the sixth game to take a 4-2 lead.
Kasatkina served out the seventh game to open a 5-2 lead, before breaking Teichmann again in the next game to complete her big comeback victory. It was the third meeting between Kasatkina and Teichmann. After beating Teichmann in Abu Dhabi, Kasatkina improved her head-to-head against the Swiss to 3-0.
