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An Australian to watch out for in 2026 is our newest Australian: Daria Kasatkina.
Kasatkina switched allegiances from Russia to Australia in March 2025 and will be playing under the Australian flag at Melbourne Park for the first time this summer.
I had a long chat with her for this Saturday’s tennis edition of Good Weekend, where we spoke about her coming out in 2022, the invasion of Ukraine and whether she still loves tennis after all this time.
Daria Kasatkina at the 2025 US Open.Credit: Getty Images
Here’s a brief look at that piece, which you can read in full here.
Not long ago, Daria Kasatkina lost all sense of who she was. She lost the desire to be on court, to travel from tournament to tournament, to speak to the press, to play the role she was accustomed to playing. She even lost her hair. Kasatkina had been on the women’s professional tour for 11 years. Travelling, training, competing, recovering and repeating, and she could no longer take it, so in October 2025, she decided she wouldn’t. She would end her season instead. Immediately.
“The first three weeks of my break were -actually terrible,” she says via video call from Barcelona, where she trains. “Even though I was resting, taking a break, the first three weeks I couldn’t understand what’s going on. Who I am, what am I doing?”
When we speak, it’s been almost six weeks since Kasatkina has touched a racquet. The tennis tour continued without her – the tour always continues – but the 28-year-old had tuned out from the game she loves. “I felt that I completely hate what I’m doing,” she says. “I don’t want to be out there.”
It was a hard truth for someone who, at one point, was ranked as high as world No. 8 and had enjoyed success on tour since turning pro in 2014. Kasatkina has won eight titles, her first at Charleston, South Carolina in 2017, on clay – her preferred surface. She won the Billie Jean King Cup with the Russian team in 2021, and reached a maiden grand slam semi-final at Roland Garros in 2022. That’s more highs than enjoyed by most.
But towards the end of 2025, the lows were much more common. On court, things were falling apart. She was losing matches she would typically win, against opponents ranked much lower than herself. For the first time since 2019, her season losses (22) outnumbered her wins (19).
Off-court, meanwhile, she was breaking. “The last couple of years, they were pretty harsh,” she notes. “At the beginning, the first two, three years I was able to handle all of this pressure and the situation and the environment … but after three-and-a-half years, I realised that I am cracking.”
