Daria's New World

Did Daria Kasatkina really expect to be in the quarterfinals at Indian Wells in her first try?

The 18-year-old Russian ducked her head and smiled when she was asked this question after her convincing 6-4, 6-2 fourth-round win over 21st-ranked Timea Bacsinszky on Tuesday night. If you’ve ever watched one of these post-upset interviews before, you probably thought you knew what was coming next. Most players, after pulling off a big win, will shake their heads and say they never could have dreamed they’d get this far when the tournament began.

Apparently, Kasatkina could dream it.

“Little bit,” she said, still smiling.

From the way  the words came out, you got the feeling her real answer was, “Uh, of course I knew I could go deep here.”

And why wouldn’t she? This season has been one long debutante ball for Kasatkina. She began it, in her first match of the year, with a win over Venus Williams in Auckland. She followed that up with a third-round run in her first Australian Open, and the next month made the semis in St. Petersburg.

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Kasatkina is currently ranked 48th, up—way up—from No. 272 two seasons ago. But she was hardly an unknown before this year. She was the 2014 French Open girls’ champion and a junior rival of fellow 18-year-old Belinda Bencic. So far her transition to the pro tour has been remarkably friction-free. How does Kasatkina explain her success? It’s simple, according to her.

“I think I’m playing good,” she said with shy bluntless after her win over Bacsinszky, “so I  think I deserve it.”

Watch her in action for a few minutes and you won’t disagree. Kasatkina may have the most free-flowingly effective strokes of any young player in tennis.

Last year, when she reached the third round in her first U.S. Open, my eye was caught by her loose-armed, two-handed backhand. She can hit it up the line for winners, but her best shot from that side may be crosscourt; she surprises her opponents with the angle she can create from deep in the court. Now, it seems, in the grand Russian tradition of Marat Safin and Yevgeny Kafelnikov, she's added a jumping version to her double-handed arsenal.

So far in Indian Wells, though, it has been her forehand that’s impressed the most. Kasatkina brings the racquet behind her head, turns its face toward the fence behind her and snaps it back through with a boldly wristy stroke. It’s not a technique that most instructors would teach; busyness and wristiness normally equal inconsistency. But while Kasatkina is just 5’7” and 139 pounds, she has no trouble snapping the frame through and generating pace and topspin. She wields it like a small stick, and makes it look light in her hands. When she’s hitting her forehand well, taking it early and pushing her opponents into the corners with it, you can almost imagine it as a trend-setting, evolutionary stroke.

Of course, shots are easy to see and analyze; what’s harder to know is the mentality a player will bring to the court. That doesn’t seem like it will be a problem for Kasatkina, either. In her previous round, she saved a match point in a gritty win over Monica Puig. While Kasatkina can get angry, she also seems to be able to calm herself down by taking a slow, flat-footed stroll in between points.

I liked her on-court rapport with coach Vlado Platonic in the Bacsinszky match. Up 4-0 in the second set, Kasatkina had a brief, nerve-induced hiccup. On the next changeover, he calmly told her that she was rushing; that she needed to be patient and keep moving her feet, and that she had to be ready for a last-gasp effort from Bacsinszky. They finished with a hearty handshake, and Kasatkina closed out the win.

“This is my first full year on the WTA, so first I want to adapt, because it’s very difficult,” Kasatkina told WTA Insider Courtney Nguyen earlier this season. "...You always have to change something; you cannot stay on one level ... My psychology is to be a little bit more defense, so I’m trying to be more offense.”

Kasatkina said she developed that defensive mindset because, “Maybe I’m not big enough to hit hard, and when I was a kid, I’d play smarter [rather] than just hitting the ball. But now I have to be more aggressive; otherwise, it’s impossible.”

Can someone standing 5’7” still win big in tennis? It won’t be easy, and Kasatkina knows it. She may know it even better very soon. In her next match, she faces 6’1 Karolina Pliskova, who owns one of the game’s biggest serves.

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Still, it’s far too early for Kasatkina, or us, to worry about her future. She’s a talent worth watching, however high she eventually does or doesn’t climb. We’ve talked a lot about the “chaos” on the WTA tour this season; her upsets are the opposite of that phenomenon. They’re what every sport needs, the opening acts in a new player’s long-term narrative.

In Kasatkina’s mind, that narrative has begun; she’s already looking back on her junior days with a fond nostalgia.

“When I was young,” the 18-year-old said in January, “I was just dreaming to play against [the top players], somewhere at the Grand Slams. And now I can do it.”

Dreams turn into expectations, and expectations lead to ... we should have fun finding out.