Katya def. Babos 6-4 6-4 to bag her second WTA singles title, almost a decade after winning Birmingham :yeah:
Wow, where did this run come from? Her results have been poor all year...
I expected her to get tight when serving for the match, but she was actually pretty solid: no DF, and she went for her shots during the rallies, hitting some nice winners in that last game.
31 year old Kateryna Bondarenko reached her first quarterfinal of the year ending the challenge of former winner here and last year's finalist seventh seeded Japanese Nao Hibino.
Watched by her husband and 3 year old daughter Kateryna held on to her nerves in the end of the second set to wrap up the match and register the upset of the day.
She spoke to Sunder Iyer of the Tashkent Open Media team after her win.
Q: About the match?
Ans: I played a good match with some really good rallies. I was happy to finish the match in two sets as I was getting tired.
Q: You had a lead and then two match points which slipped away?
Ans: I started making more errors and Nao started playing aggressively. I was serving 5-4 40-15 I got a little tired and lost the game and felt my momentum slipping, but I told myself that I had to win in two sets, the third set would have been a difficult situation, I started playing better and stayed calm and finished the match.
Q: The win is your first big result of the year?
Ans: Yes, it's been my worst year on the Tour, but hope this tournament will turn fortunes, I still have few more tournaments before I end the year.
Q: Travel with your daughter and playing professional tennis matches is not easy thing as we see?
Ans: It's more difficult, to be tennis player and a mother at the same time is not easy, I have to first look at her needs before I enter the court. Sometimes it is difficult to even practice with her around because she wants my attention, but now I've got used to it.
She doesn't understand if I have won or lost my match but she smiles at me when I come off the court and that the best thing about being a mother tennis player.
Q: How do you look at yourself as a mother and a player?
Ans: After the birth of my child attention has shifted to my daughter, earlier attention was on me, I love to spend more time on her now and enjoy taking her on the Tour with me.
Q: Your future plans?
Ans: I will play for a couple of years more and then maybe stop and have many more kids and enjoy life.