Athlete of the Week
Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, is these days seeing a major womens WTA 500 tennis tournament with 780 thousand dollars in prize money.
România Internațional, 07.02.2023, 13:19
Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, is these days seeing a major womens WTA 500 tennis tournament with 780 thousand dollars in prize money.
At the aforementioned competition, Romania is being represented by Monica Niculescu who pairs with Miyu Kato of Japan seeded 38th in the double ranking.
The Romanian-Japanese pair will compete in the round of sixteen on Wednesday against the pair made up of Norwegian Ulrikke Eikeri and Alexa Guarachi of Chile, WTA 51st and 47th respectively.
Monica Niculescu comes after a good week when she had made it to the semis of the Lyon tournament together with Viktorija Golubic of Switzerland. Her qualification for the French competition has been the best Romanian performance of the past days for which Radio Romania International has designated Monica Niculescu athlete of the week.
Monica was born in Slatina, on September 25, 1987 and has lived in Bucharest since the age of four. She took up tennis when she was five years old and turned professional in 2002. She made to her highest position in the world ranking, 28th, in February 2012. She won three WTA single tournaments, in 2013 in Florianopolis, Brasil, in 2014 in Guangzhou, China, and in 2016 in Luxembourg.
Her performances in the doubles competitions were even more notable as she reaped 10 WTA titles starting the year 2009, when she emerged as winner in Budapest together with Russian Alisa Kleybanova. She got the highest position in the WTA doubles ranking in April 2018 when she went eleventh.
She started off on the right foot in 2023 with a qualification in the quarter finals of the Hobart tournament together with Alicia Barnett of Britain. Then she teamed up with Viktorija Golubic of Switzerland to make it to the round of 16th of the Australian Open. She is presently ranking 43rd in the world doubles ranking.
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