Qualifying to the main draw of a World Tour event is no easy task. Ask any players competing at the A1 Major Vienna and they will tell you. Well, except maybe for Russians Ksenia Dabizha and Daria Rudykh as they did it for the third-straight time after they won a pair of matches at the Danube Island.
A new team for the 2019 season, the 25-year-old Dabizha and the 22-year-old Rudykh have played in seven qualifiers since they joined forces and they advanced in five of them, including the Swatch Major Gstaad, earlier this month, and the four-star Espinho Open, two weeks ago, the last two tournaments the played at.
“It means a lot for us to qualify again,” Dabizha said after their victory. “Qualifying is not easy and I think we’ve been doing a good job. Step by step we’re getting a better team and getting better results. We obviously want to be in the main draw soon and this tournament is a good chance for us since it’s a Major and we can win a lot of points if we do well.”
Advancing in Vienna, however, demanded a lot from the Russians as after debuting with a 21-16, 21-19 win over Polish Monika Brzostek and Aleksandra Gromadowska they played the home team of the Klinger sisters Dorina and Ronja and needed all three sets (21-18, 15-21, 15-8) to overcome the Autrians and their loud fans at the Danube Island.
“It’s always hard playing the home teams and the fans were very loud here,” Rudykh added. “We knew they’d have massive support from the fans and we prepared for it, but at times it was very hard to keep our focus. But going through this situation only makes us stronger going forward.”
Other teams to advance from the Vienna Major’s qualifier to the main draw were Brazil’s Maria Elisa Antonelli/Carol Salgado, Germany’s Victoria Bieneck/Isabel Schneider and Spain’s Maria Carro/Paula Soria.
