Liudmila Samsonova

There, she stunned fourth seed and 56th-ranked Tamara Zidanšek, in straight sets, before hitting 41 winners to beat Lausanne champion Fiona Ferro in the quarterfinals to make her first WTA semifinal.

The win allowed her debuting on the WTA rankings, at the 960th spot and finished the year in 840th.

The upcoming two years saw her struggle on the ITF Circuit, amassing an 11–12 win–loss record which caused her ranking to stagnate.

Nonetheless, she managed to return to the top 1000 towards the end of 2016, after reaching the final of an $10k event in Solarino.

Samsonova's first real breakthrough came when she was leaving her teenage years.

Liudmila Dmitrievna Samsonova (Людмила Дмитриевна Самсонова; born 11 November 1998) is a Russian professional tennis player.

In 2013, Samsonova made her professional debut at consecutive ITF Circuit tournaments in Umag, but lost her both singles qualifying matches.

She also competed for Italy from 2014 to 2018.

Samsonova has career-high WTA rankings of No. 12 in singles and No. 40 in doubles.

She won her first WTA Tour title at the 2021 German Open, a WTA 500 title, and has overall won four singles titles and one doubles title on the WTA Tour.

She has also won a total of eight singles and three doubles titles on the ITF Circuit.

Between 2014 and 2018, Liudmila represented Italy in professional tennis, before switching to the Russian flag.

In July 2021, she explained the reason behind her decision was the extra pressure of competing for the Italian national team, a country where tennis is more followed than in Russia where she feels like competing only for herself, especially considering her "boom boom" hard-hitting game style.

Russian sources were more specific about all the reasons behind the unusual switch after turning 18 in the light of significant amount of local players switching from the Russian flag.

According to the Tennis Weekend, Samsonova faced problems while trying to obtain an Italian passport and there was a certain shortage of support for her as an immigrant from the Italian Tennis Federation.

She keeps practicing outside of Russia, as she is unsatisfied with the condition for professional tennis provided by the Russian Tennis Federation domestically.

In October 2021, Samsonova clarified she has never had Italian citizenship and thus never faced the option of choosing between the two flags.

Liudmila admitted that if her parents had stayed in Russia she would have chosen figure skating.

She speaks fluent Italian, Russian, and English.

2014 saw Samsonova winning her first ITF title at a $10k event in Rome, beating three seeded players to clinch the victory despite being unranked.

Samsonova reached her highest ITF junior ranking on 18 July 2016, peaking at the 65th spot on the rankings.

Her biggest achievements were winning consecutive ITF Junior Circuit Grade-2 tournaments in 2016, defeating notable players such as Kaja Juvan and Marta Kostyuk.

Reaching three $15k finals in Hammamet, Pula and Mâcon in 2017, respectively, the Russian almost halved her ranking and ended the year ranked 552nd.

2018 was another decent year for her, having reached a total of four finals.

Overriding her personal best results, the Russian won her first $25k title at the Open Castilla y León, stunning third seed Başak Eraydın in the final with the loss of just two games.

Samsonova caused a huge shock at the Open de Saint-Malo, a $60k event, coming through three rounds of qualifying to lift the biggest title of her career and breaking the top 200 for the first time in her career.

Her 40–21 win–loss record helped Samsonova end the year inside the top 200 for the first time.

Samsonova started the year with her Grand Slam debut at the Australian Open, but was defeated in the second qualifying round by Karolína Muchová.

Choosing to compete in higher-level WTA tournaments with her ranking, the Russian fell in the qualifying rounds of Premier tournaments in St. Petersburg, Doha and Dubai.

After a five-match losing streak to start the clay-court season, Samsonova stunned several higher-ranked players, including tenth seed Marie Bouzková, to qualify for the main draw at the French Open on her first attempt.

Despite losing in the first round to 23rd seed Donna Vekić, she reached a new career-high ranking of world No. 153, on 10 June 2019 after the tournament.

Reaching her second WTA Tour main draw at the rain-plagued Nottingham Open, Samsonova continued her good run of form before falling to former top-15 player Yanina Wickmayer in the final round of qualifying at the Wimbledon Championships, on her debut.

Samsonova received her first direct entry into a WTA Tour main draw at the Ladies Open Lausanne, but lost to lucky loser Han Xinyun in the second round.

In the following week, despite losing to Amandine Hesse in the final qualifying round of the Palermo Ladies Open, she received an entry into the main draw by virtue of an emptied lucky-loser spot.

At the 2020–21 Billie Jean King Cup, Samsonova led the Russian team to their first triumph since 2008, winning all five of her matches in both singles and doubles.

Samsonova was born in the industrial city of Olenegorsk, Murmansk Oblast, Russia.

Their family moved with the then-one-year-old Liudmila to Italy.

Her father Dmitry, a table tennis player, was invited to play for the club Ferentino based in Turin.

Her father urged her to start playing either table tennis or lawn tennis, choosing the latter.

She started playing at the age of six, joining Riccardo Piatti's tennis academy in Sanremo after the local tennis association helped her financially.