Daria Kasatkina exited the WTA 1000 in Dubai in the second round as the seventh seed suffered a dramatic loss to Barbora Krejcikova.

Darya Kasatkina, Barbora Krejchikova was eliminated

Kasatkina, who began working with coach Flavio Cipolla, lost to the 2021 Roland Garros champion 6-4, 4-6, 7-5 after two hours and 35 minutes of play.

Daria led 5-3 in the deciding set and served to win at 5-4, but lost four match points and Barbora eventually prevailed, winning four games in a row.

Krejcikova (30 WTA, the highest number was 2) will play in the round of 16 against the winner of the match between Yulia Putintseva (46 WTA) and Petra Kvitova (15 WTA, favorite 12).

The Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships runs from February 19 to 25 on hard, is part of the “WTA 1000” category and has a total prize pool of $2,788,468. Simona Halep won the tournament in 2015 and 2020, and the last edition went to Jelena Ostapenko of Latvia.