Daria Kasatikina, Yelena Ostapenko and Lyudmila Samsonova justified their status as favorites to win the WTA Elite Trophy 2023 tournament on Thursday.

The victories of Kasatkina, Ostapenko and Samsonova at the WTA Elite Trophy 2023

Kasatkinia (17 WTA) needed only two sets to defeat Poland’s Magda Lynette (23 WTA).

After two hours and ten minutes of play, the Russian won 6-3, 6-4.

Instead, Olena Ostapenko had to work harder against the Croatian Donna Vekic.

Leading after the first set, the Latvian won the next two with a score of 4-6, 6-4, 6-1.

In the last match of the day, Lyudmila Samsonova defeated China’s Lin Zhu with a score of 2-6, 6-2, 6-1.

WTA Elite Trophy 2023 will be held on October 24-29 on the hard (Greenset) in Zhuhai, China. The competition brought to the start the best players who did not make it to the Cancun Tournament of Champions.

It has a total prize pool of $2,409,000 and 12 athletes at the start (divided into four groups of three players each). The first place in each group goes to the semi-finals.

Group A (Azalea): Barbora Krejchikova, Darya Kasatkina, Magda Lynette

Group B (Camellia): Madison Keys, Beatrice Haddad Maya, Caroline Garcia

Group C (Orchid): Yelena Ostapenko, Qinwen Zheng, Donna Vekich

Group D (Rose): Lyudmila Samsonova, Veronika Kudermetova, Lin Zhu (wild card).

This is what the list of favorites looks like: Barbora Krejchikova (1), Madison Keys (2), Yelena Ostapenko (3), Lyudmila Samsonova (4), Veronika Kudermetova (5), Daria Kasatkina (6), Zheng Qinwen (7), Beatrice Haddad Maya (8), Caroline Garcia (9), Magda Lynette (10), Donna Vekic (11) and Zhu Lin (12).