Daria Kasatkina opens up about burnout, exhaustion in latest vlog with Natalia Zabiiako

Daria Kasatkina and partner Natalia Zabiiako strive to present an unvarnished look at life as a professional tennis player with their Zabiiako & Kasatkina YouTube channel, but never has that mission been clearer than with their latest release documenting their trip from Tokyo to Beijing.

Having reached the quarterfinals of the Toray Pan Pacific Open, Kasatkina found herself in the midst of a logistical nightmare as she and Zabiiako attempted to arrive for the China Open with enough time to prepare for the WTA 1000 event.

An uncensored Kasatkina let loose about the late-season exhaustion, which at that point had resulted in over two weeks without a day off, in a car outside the airport as she and Zabiiako waited for her team to withdraw money.

“I played in Tokyo last night and it was impossible to fly in the evening,” Kasatkina explains in a vlog entitled, in part, Problems In Tennis. “So I needed to fly the next day, fight at 10AM. I needed to arrive earlier, so I have time to practice because on Sunday, tomorrow, I have to play.

“Honestly, I’m fucking knackered,” continues Kasatkina, who went on to lose in the second round of Beijing to Wang Xinyu. “Fuck tennis. The game of tennis itself is the simplest thing we do. Everything else is just completely fucking bullshit.”

Kasatkina’s complaints come on the heels of reports that WTA players are pushing the tour to match the ATP’s plans to provide athletes a guaranteed income and grant salaries to those ranked inside the Top 250.

According to a letter, the “tour is becoming incredibly demanding on us, creating physical and mental stresses not sustainable in the long run.”

While the unfiltered intro from Kasatkina soon gives way to the lighter fare that has helped K&Z amass just under 40K subscribers and launch a couple’s Instagram, it is clear that the players’ calls to address the problems with tennis are only getting louder.