Evgeniya Rodina

Career summary

Rodina has made strong progress up through the world rankings to reach a career high of World No. 120 by the end of 2007, and has won four career ITF singles titles to date, of which one has been at $50,000 level and the other three all at $25,000.

2004–05

Rodina began her career on the ITF circuit with the assistance of a wildcard into the first round of the main draw of a $25,000 tournament at Moscow in late August 2004, when she was just fifteen and a half years old, and justified the award by taking a set from up-and-coming fellow Russian star Elena Vesnina, though she lost the match in three.

Further wildcards into two successive $10,000 events at Dubrovnik, Croatia that October gave her the opportunity to win her first and second main-draw ITF matches without ever having had to qualify for an ITF event, though she lost in the second round on both occasions.

These two results were sufficient to put her onto the tail end of the rankings board at World No. 1138 by the end of the year.

After taking a six-month break from competition, she was granted a further wildcard directly into the main draw of a $10,000 event at Cavtat, Croatia in late April, 2005, a couple of months after her sixteenth birthday, and this time won two rounds before losing in the quarter-finals.

At the end of that same week, she at last entered a $10,000 qualifying draw on the merit of her ranking alone, and proved her capability by qualifying and then winning four rounds of the main draw without dropping a set, only to lose in the final to a little-known player called Vanja Corovic of Serbia and Montenegro.

Her next significant breakthrough followed in mid-August, as she came through qualifying into a $25,000 draw for the first time at Moscow, and defeated Oxana Lyubtsova in the main draw on the way to a quarter-final defeat by up-and-coming fellow Russian star Vasilisa Bardina.

The following week, she was wildcarded directly into a $25,000 draw at Balashikha, also in Russia, and bettered her career-best result set the previous week by battling through to the semifinals, after knocking out competent Israeli player Yevgenia Savransky in the quarter-finals, before she was once again defeated by Bardina in straight sets.

On her next attempt to qualify for a $25,000 tournament, at Tbilisi, Georgia in September, she lost in the qualifying round to Kristina Antoniychuk of Ukraine in straight sets, but was allowed into the main draw as a lucky loser, only to face Bardina for a third time in the first round. Despite winning a set from her fellow Russian for the first time, she lost the match in three.

Wildcarded into a $50,000 main draw at Batumi, also in Georgia, at the end of that month, she reached the second round, then lost to another emerging compatriot Alla Kudryavtseva.

The next week, in early October, she was favoured with yet another wildcard into a main draw, and this time it was to be her first WTA tour main draw, although she had never even entered qualifying for an event above $25,000 calibre previously. Nonetheless, she rose to the occasion by defeating experienced compatriot Tatiana Panova in Round One and Hungarian talent Melinda Czink in Round Two to reach the quarter-final stage at her debut WTA event, but then lost a tight three-set clash to her compatriot Ekaterina Bychkova.

The ranking points accrued by this recent run of results were sufficient to afford her direct entry into the main draw of the next $25,000 contest she entered, which took place at Minsk in Belarus, early in November. In this instance, she won through to the quarter-finals, but was stopped a round short of her career-best performance at this level by emerging star Agnieszka Radwanska of Poland.

In mid-November she was forced to fight through qualifying to enter the popular $25,000 event at Pruhonice in the Czech Republic, and succeeded in defeating future top-50 star Dominika Cibulkova of Slovakia and Masa Zec Peskiric of Slovenia to achieve this end. But in the first round of the main draw she lost in two close sets, 4–6 4–6, to Czech player Michaela Pastikova.

She did not play another match for the next three months, but ended the year ranked World No. 323, evidencing an auspiciously rapid start after her first full year on the ITF circuit.