Anhelina Kalinina and Anastasia Potapova will be among those in first round action at the Transylvania Open 2025, a tournament whose main draw begins on Monday, February 3. Here’s the preview, predictions and tips for these matches from Transylvania.
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Anhelina Kalinina v Elena Gabriela Ruse Preview
Head-to-Head: While these two players have never faced off in the main draw at the highest level there have been two other matches between them. Kalinina won their 2018 US Open qualifiers match while Ruse made it 1-1 in a clay competition in 2019.
Anhelina Kalinina looked to have made a strong start to the new season when she took part in the Brisbane International and grabbed four successive wins to reach the semifinals.
On her way to getting there, she defeated Wang Yafan, Diana Shnaider, Yue Yuan and Kimberly Birrell before Polina Kudermetova stunned in in their last four match.
Unfortunately for Kalinina she has suffered two successive losses after that Kudermetova defeat, going down in her opener at the Australian Open to Ons Jabeur and to Clara Tauson in Linz. A comeback could be on the cards given these defeats have been to some of the top players in the world while Elena Gabriela Ruse enters the match as a 113th-player on the WTA charts.
Ruse did not feature in any of the ITF matches in the lead-up to the season’s opening Grand Slam where she had to make do with playing in the qualifiers.
Three wins there took her to the main draw where she defeated Irina Begu in straight sets to make it to the second round. Ruse went down fighting to the eventual champion Madison Keys in that match.
Kalinina will start off a favourite though given her superior pedigree and better indoor hardcourt record.
Kalinina v Ruse prediction: Kalinina to win in straight sets: 10/11
Anastasia Potapova v Julia Grabher Preview
Head-to-Head: It’s 1-1 on head to head with Grabher having won their first match on the clay courts of Valencia in 2022 while Potapova defeating her opponent as recently as last week in Linz in the first round.
Anastasia Potapova has had three solid performances across three tournaments this season. It started with a third round appearance in Brisbane, a second round showing at the Australian Open and more recently Potapova also made the quarterfinals in Linz before bowing out to Karolina Muchova.
On her way to making the last eight stage in Linz, Potapova had routed Julia Grabher in the first round, winning it 6-2, 6-2 which talks deeply into the difference in the quality of the two players right now.
Because as far as the rankings go, that’s already quite telling. Potapova is on the verge of breaking back into the top 30 while Grabher was outside the top 400 till very recently.
Backing Potapova to ease to a straight-set win here again.
Potapova v Grabher prediction: Potapova to win in straight sets: 4/6
Arantxa Rus v Viktorija Golubic Preview
Head-to-Head: There have been three previous meetings between these two players with Golubic leading 2-1. Two of these matches came in hardcourt competitions and it’s 1-1 on it with Golubic having won their latest match at the Jiangxi Open last year.
Arantxa Rus, ranked 88th in the world, is in the twilight of her career and enters this tournament hoping to break a three-match losing streak this year.
She had started the season with a defeat to Yue Yuan at the Brisbane International and then fallen in the second qualifier of the Hobart International, going down to Nuria Parrizas-Diaz.
And Olga Danilovic got the better of her at the Australian Open before the Linz Open saw her exit in the opener to Sorana Cirstea.
On the other hand, Viktorija Golubic has held a bit of her own in the qualifiers of the two events she has participated in – Australian Open and Linz Open.
She made the main draw at the former before going down fighting to Elise Mertens in the first round while losing in the second qualifier at the Linz Open.
What works in Golubic’s favour is her record indoors, which is better than Rus’ and while she is ranked more than 20 spots behind her, she could hold the edge in this one.
Rus v Golubic prediction: Golubic to win: 4/5
Elisabetta Cocciaretto v Irina Begu Preview
Head-to-Head: Begu has beaten Cocciaretto in both their previous meetings, having won at Rome in 2020 and Wimbledon in 2022. Cocciaretto has yet to win a set here.
It has been a woeful start to the season for Elisabetta Cocciaretto, who has featured in three tournaments and is yet to win a set. That’s right, three matches played, six sets lost and none won!
In the first, in Hobart she was downed by the out of sorts Veronika Kudermetova before Diana Shnaider got the better of her at the Australian Open. And last week Cocciaretto featured in Linz only to lose to Rebecca Sramkova.
It’s not as if Irina Begu has done too well either, as she failed to make it past Leylah Fernandez in the Adelaide International qualifiers and then lost her opener at the Australian Open to Elena Gabriela Ruse.
All of this points to a quick check on how their performances in indoor hardcourt competitions have been and that again, tells us nothing but the fact that they both struggle on these surfaces.
We could see a tight match as a result between two close-quality players that goes into the third set.
Cocciaretto v Begu prediction: Three sets in the match: 5/4
