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Daria Gavrilova beats Ivanovic, eyes off Australian women’s number 1
Shane Jones
Roar Guru
13th May, 2015
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Shane Jones
Roar Guru
13th May, 2015
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1311 Reads

If Russian-born Australian Daria Gavrilova continues her form in 2015, she will be Australia’s number 1 female player by year’s end.

Last night the 21-year-old defeated Ana Ivanovic 5-7 7-6 7-6 to progress to the third round of the Rome WTA Premier event.

It was her second win against a top-10 opponent – she defeated Maria Sharapova in Miami – and her second round of 16 appearance at a premier WTA event after Miami in March.

With limited support from the Russian tennis federation, and exclusions from Fed Cup squads which should have included her, Daria opted to play for Australia before last year’s US Open.

In WTA events she still represents Russia, but when she plays in Grand Slams that changes to Australia – so next week at the French Open, she will represent the green and gold.

She is currently in the process of attaining citizenship and has resided in Melbourne for the last few years. When her citizenship is complete – likely at the end of this year – she will represent Ausrtalia in all events, and could instantly become Australia’s number 1 player.

Gavrilova has won 20 times this year on the Tour, with two ITF title wins in Burnie and Launceston. She is also the only player to make two round of 16 appearances at Premier events – which are the identical to the ATP Masters events.

In comparison, she has more wins on the Tour than Stosur and Dellacqua this season, with both having eight and five victories respectively.

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Jarmila Gajdosova has half of the wins of Gavrilova in 2015 and made the semi-finals at the Kuala Lumpur WTA event. Since then though she has lost three out of her last four matches.

In the WTA race, which counts ranking points earned in 2015, Gavrilova has earned 710 points in 12 events, with Jarmila Gajdosova second on 488. Gavrilova’s lead could be more if she beats Timea Bacsinszky later today.

Sam Stosur, Ajla Tomljanovic, and Casey Dellacqua – with 468, 443, and 238 respectively – round out the top five for the Aussies.

What is significant about the lead is that Gavrilova defends the least amount of points out of the five for the rest of the season. Gavrilova only defends 151 points for the rest of 2015, with none until the US Open.

She has the luxury of building a ranking, rather than protecting one.

The same can’t be said for the others – Stosur has 1,317, Dellacqua has 868, Gajdosova has 510 and Tomljanovic has 452.

We’ve seen already this year how defending points can be difficult. Dellacqua couldn’t replicate the form from the 2014 Australian Open and Stosur hasn’t matched her 2014 results so far in 2015.

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Australia’s current number 1 has to defend 240 points at the upcoming French Open.

With neither of the top three Aussie players in form, or one hundred per cent fit after Dellacqua and Gajdosova retired from Rome, this opens the door for Gavrilova to pounce on the number 1 spot.

While she may be just small in stature, at just 166 centimetres tall, Gavrilova makes up for it with her fight. She wears her heart on her sleeve, attacks every point, and doesn’t give an inch.

That determination, fighting attitude, and pocket-rocket power could move her to the top of the Australian summit.

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