MOSCOW, February 6. /TASS/. /TASS/. Russian tennis player Lyudmila Samsonova breezed past Ukraine’s Lesya Tsurenko on Tuesday in her opening round match of the 2024 WTA Abu Dhabi tennis tournament.

Samsonova, who is playing at the tournament under a neutral status, defeated her Ukrainian opponent with a straight sets win of 6-0; 6-1 and she is now set to play in the next round against another Ukrainian player, Angelina Kalinina.

Tsurenko, 34, is currently 37th in the WTA Rankings having won four WTA tournaments. Getting to the quarterfinals of the 2018 US Open was her best career finish in the Grand Slam series.

Russia’s 25-year-old Samsonova is currently ranked 15TH in the Women’s Tennis Association Rankings and has four WTA titles under her belt. Playing on the Grand Slam circuit, she has never made it past the quarterfinals. In 2021, she won the Billie Jean King Cup as part of the Russian national team.

The 2024 Abu Dhabi tournament is a WTA 500 professional tennis event, which is played on outdoor hard courts at the Zayed Sports City International Tennis Centre in Abu Dhabi between February 5 and 11 and has over $922,570 in prize money up for grabs.

Russian players’ neutral status at tennis tournaments

On February 28, 2022, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) issued recommendations to international sports federations to bar athletes from Russia and Belarus from taking part in international tournaments, citing Moscow’s special military operation in Ukraine as the reason.

Following the IOC’s recommendations in late February 2022, the majority of global sports federations decided to bar athletes from Russia and Belarus from all international sports tournaments.

The International Tennis Federation (ITF) ruled on March 1, 2022 to suspend the membership of the Russian and Belarusian national tennis federations while also cancelling all previously scheduled tennis tournaments in the two countries.

On March 14, 2022, the ITF also confirmed its prohibition of the Russian and Belarusian national tennis teams from the 2022 Davis Cup and 2022 Billie Jean King Cup.

However, the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) and the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) allowed tennis players from Russia and Belarus to continue participating in WTA and ATP tournaments, but only under a neutral status.