Darya Kasatkina, the member of the EMPIRE Tennis Academy who is coached by Vladimir Platenik, is still successful in Florida. She is in the semifinal of the Sunrise tournament.

Her coach Vladimir Platenik was with Kasatkina during the beginning of the year in Florida for training. Kasatkina is very successful recently because she advanced to the semifinal just two weeks ago in Plantation. In Daytona Beach, where $25K tournament was taking place last week, she beat Elise Mertens 6-2, 4-6, 6-0 in the final. She earned 69 points from the first two tournaments and she added another 18 in Sunrise.

In the first round of the Sunrise tournament, she won against Hungarian Reka-Luca Jani 7-5, 7-5. But more interesting win happened in the second round, where Kasatkina beat Catherina Bellis from the USA. Just 15-years old American was in the headlines in August 2014 when she won against Dominika Cibulkova from Slovakia in the first round of the US Open (6-1, 4-6, 6-4). Bellis become the youngest player to win a U.S. Open match since 1996. She was No. 1208 in the WTA rankings in that time. "I think that Darya after a successful start to the season has begun to understand that she is able to move forward at the ITF category tournaments. She was thrilled with pre-season training and she is more confident because of better fitness. Moreover, she is able to play more matches in a row. She is communicating everyday about tactic in the match. She has a huge hunger for victories. It's not usual for the player to be able to play three tournaments in a rowin this way. This shows that she is in a good mood," added Platenik.

Kasatkina wasn't beaten also in the quarterfinal where she won over the Romanian player Edina Gallovits-Hall. The member of the EMPIRE Tennis Academy then lost to Spaniard Tormo.

Kasatkina reaches new ranking high after Florida trip - No. 264!

KASATKINA'S RESULTS IN SUNRISE

1R: Reka-Luca Jani (HUN) 7-5, 7-5

2R: Catherine Bellis (USA) 6-4, 6-1

quarterfinal: Edina Gallovits-Hall (ROU) 6-7(1), 6-2, 6-4

semifinal: Sara Sorribes Tormo (ESP) 0-6, 0-6