Daria Gavrilova: The Russian Tennis Star That Became Aussie

Daria Alexeyevna Gavrilova was born on a cold day, March 5th, 1994, in Moscow, Russia. Her father’s name is Alexey Gavrilova, and her mother’s name is Natalia Gavrilova. The twenty-seven-year-old tennis player has an athletic build of height 1.66 m or 5 feet 5.25 inches and weighs 61 kg or 134 lbs, and the color of her eyes and hair are both dark brown. Moreover, Daria Gavrilova’s zodiac sign is Pisces. Besides her father and mother, she also has an older brother Stepan who lives in Moscow, Russia. At the age of 15, in 20013, Daria met the young Australian tennis player Luke Saville at another junior tournament in Mexico, and they got attracted to each other instantly. The next couple of years, they were writing back and forth on SMS and Facebook, but subsequently, when she was getting 18, things were serious enough for her to move to Melbourne, Australia, where she is currently residing. Daria loves that the people in Australia are chilled out. Furthermore, the style of life and the fact that most people are pretty sports-minded and sports-loving makes her life much more easy-going and comfortable than when she lived in Russia. In fact, Melbourne was named the most liveable city in seven consecutive years. In 2017, just before the runner-up Vienna, Austria, with Vancouver, Canada at the third spot.

Daria believes her upbringing in Moscow was different from other kids in Russia. Maybe it was an early sign that she would not end up living her life there. She is convinced that her father doesn’t have a Russian mentality, while he always approached life with a great deal of more openness than many of his fellow Russians. Living with Luke Saville in Australia, she received her treasured Australian passport in December 2015. Within a month, she was representing her adopted country at the Hopman Cup in Perth. It was a great start to her new life in Australia when she was able to lift the trophy with bad boy Nick Kyrgios, breaking a long 17-year winning drought. Even though she has moved to Melbourne, she still enjoys going back to Moscow and Europe, meeting and enjoying herself with all her friends and family. She often travels back to her birth-country for a couple of weeks in the off-season in October-November every year. Daria Gavrilova, unfortunately, has had many problems with injuries, giving her difficulties in many years of her young adult life. After a knee injury, Gavrilova underwent a knee reconstruction in October 2014. Later on, in 2016, she had a foot injury, which gave her several issues with pain and inconvenience the following years, and non-surgical treatments never worked. In 2021, she chose to have Achilles tendon surgery to fix the injury and turn a page to a new beginning.

In 2020 Daria Gavrilova was planning to return to tennis after the mentioned injury and pain problems over the past years. Hence, she headed to Europe for the revised clay-court season, where she reached the second round of the French Open before heading back to her adopted home nation of Australia. Even though most countries in the world have relaxed quarantine rules and laws for athletes in ‘sport bubbles,’ Australia has chosen to maintain a strict quarantine for almost all international arrivals. As a result, Gavrilova and her compatriot Ellen Perez became isolated together in a hotel room in Perth. They spent most of their time being active on social media, sharing their experiences of the quarantine, playing badminton and tennis in the hotel room – just to keep occupied. However, Daria Gavrilova also used her time setting up her own bracelet company. While playing tournaments, she could never find the right bracelet with a tight enough fit to the wrist, so she decided to make bracelets to improve this situation. Regarding Daria and social media, she is quite active with 116K followers on Instagram (@daria_gav), 44K followers on Facebook (Daria Gavrilova), and 57.3K followers on Twitter (@Daria_gav). She is more active on her Instagram account than her Facebook or Twitter. Last but not least, Daria calls herself a foodie. She particularly favors eating the traditional cuisine of Italy or Japan.

Daria Gavrilova was an early starter with her sport, and she was acquainted with tennis at the age of six. Her father believed that tennis was the best sport for a girl, and it was quite convenient while the school was close to where they lived. She was rejected by the first tennis coach they approached, Marina Marenko. The coach thought Daria was too ‘chubby,’ and she already had plenty of talent at her disposal. Her father didn’t take no for an answer and convinced Marina Marenko to take Daria as a student. Nowadays, she still remembers her first tennis lesson in Moscow when she was only about six and a half years old. Daria was wearing a boy’s outfit because her parents couldn’t find anything that looked like a tennis outfit for girls. Beginning the training, her coach told her to run some laps around the court to warm up, but she refused. She didn’t think there were any good reasons to do it while she wouldn’t be racing anyone else. Even though she wasn’t good when she was beginning, she was an excellent visual learner, spending time studying the older children, which helped her memorize and learn the different techniques, positions, and moves quickly. When she reached 12, Daria realized she was great at her sport and decided to become a professional tennis player. At 15, in 2009, Daria moved to France for schooling at Patrick Mouratoglou’s Tennis Academy to strengthen and improve her technique further.

In 2010 Gavrilova had the honor to represent Russia at the Youth Olympic Games in Singapore. Despite entering the tournament unseeded, Gavrilova progressed all the way to the gold medal match, beating players as Tang Haochen, Stefanie Tan, seventh seed Jana Čepelová and top seed Elina Svitolina. Gavrilova lost the first set against Zheng Saisai from China in the finals but managed to pull herself up and win the gold medal. Following her win, she became the top-ranked junior player in the ITF. In September 2010, she entered the 2010 US Open tennis Tournament for juniors as the top seed, and she progressed through the draw with wins over Caroline Price, Lauren Davis, Tang Haochen, Sloane Stephens, and Robin Anderson to set up an all-Russian final with Yulia Putintseva, emerging with a two sets victory. Additionally, she also competed with
her fellow Russian Irina Khromacheva in the doubles event, where they progressed to the semifinal before losing to the eventual champions. Following her outstanding play and achievements in her 2010 junior season, Gavrilova received a wildcard to enter the main draw of the WTA tournament in her hometown of Moscow. Here she had to play against Ukraine’s Alona Bondarenko and lost her WTA debut in straight sets. Nonetheless, she ended the 2010 season as the No. 1 junior player in the world.

After her exceptional 2010 junior season, she began to play with the senior players, where the competition was a bit harder. In 2011 and 2012, she was in WTA qualifying three times, including US Open, and won one singles title on ITF Circuit. Three tears later, in 2013, she reached third place two times, including in the Australian Open, and came in second place four times. After an ACL Injury (Anterior Cruciate Ligament) in late 2013, Daria Gavrilova missed the first six months of 2014. After her knee surgery and a recovery period, she returned strong and won one singles title and doubles titles on ITF Circuit in 2014. The following year, Gavrilova became WTA’s Most Impressive Newcomer for 2015 after successfully managing to go from 233 to 36 on the WTA charts at the end of 2014. She represented Australia for the first time in Fed Cup in April of 2016 and secured her first victory over the reigning World No. 1 after she defeated Angelique Kerber. Later the same year, she reached her first-ever singles final in Moscow. The year after, in 2017, she once again reached the singles final at Strasbourg and later the same year at New Haven, finally winning her first WTA singles title, defeating Cibulkova in the final. In 2019, she was injured again and couldn’t play many tournaments, which resulted in a drop in the WTA rankings down to 237. The year after, in 2020, she couldn’t even participate in her favorite tournament, Australia Open, because of her injury and the need for recovery.

In 2011 Daria Gavrilova went to Mexico to play at the Davis Cup tournament for Russia. Here she met the Australian junior player Luke Saville for the first time. Both of them were 15 at the time and were to play and compete on the junior tennis circuit. After that, they were writing back and forth for the following years, and finally, two years after, they saw each other again at the Australian Open tournament. They were and are quite a remarkable couple, result-wise, since both had been the number 1 in the world while they were junior players. Gavrilova won a Grand Slam tournament in US Open and the Youth Olympic Games in Singapore and ended the 2010 season as the world number one. Luke Saville won two Grand Slams and held the number one position for half a year. At that time, both fell in love and started to see each other more frequently, establishing a more profound relationship. The couple was so in love that Daria decided to leave Russia and move to Melbourne, Australia, to be able to stay and live together with Luke. Although it’s often difficult for tennis players to maintain time for their personal life, living together gave them an advantage. As they were in the same field of occupation, the couple often schedules their tournaments together to be able to have some quality time whenever possible. This undoubtfully helped them flourish in their love life and relationship.

Once she had relocated to Australia, the relationship and the bond between them became stronger and stronger. Daria was delighted with her boyfriend and his family. Furthermore, she loved Melbourne and all the good things she could enjoy in Australia, but Luke had a surprise up his sleeve and was planning to propose to her. Daria was running late to training one day and almost missed the moment when he pulled out a ring and got down on his knees while they were at the beach. She had always asked him to surprise her but was not expecting this kind of surprise. All along, she had anticipated that the setting would be different and that he would be dressed like a prince, not a proposal in a situation where they were half-naked on the beach. With that said, she perhaps became even more excited and happy and said yes. Soon after, Daria posted what had happened on her Instagram, expressing her feelings and thoughts and how thrilled she was finally to be able to call him fiancé. The spot he had chosen was well-placed since their all-time favorite is having fun around the beach. In fact, it’s their usual routine, visiting the beach on weekends.

The couple was properly engaged in Melbourne on December 6, 2018. As always, Daria used her Instagram account to announce the news and post some pictures of the ring and the event. At this point, the couple had dated for eight years before they got engaged. They are still not married yet, but she has posted a picture on Instagram, sharing information about her wedding preparation and what they are planning. They have scheduled the marriage for December 19, 2021, almost three years after the engagement, located in Greenfields Albert Park in Melbourne VIC, where they plan to have both the wedding ceremony and a reception afterward. They even made a wedding homepage for sharing it with the world, family, and friends. Regarding the wedding date, they had actually made plans to marry earlier, but the COVID-19 lockdowns made it impossible to carry out. Hence, they had to find another time and date where they believed it to be possible.

First of all, let’s look at Daria Gavrilova’s preferences regarding her sport. Her favorite surface is hard court, and she makes most winners while using her forehand. In addition, Daria is a right-handed player using a two-handed backhand technique. Furthermore, and not surprisingly, her favorite tennis tournament is the Australian Open. Moreover, the most challenging opponent she has faced was Serena Williams. Finally, the match she remembers as her best was against Maria Sharapova at Rod Laver Arena in Fed Cup, where she won the match. Everyone outside the tennis scene finds the scoring system a bit bizarre. But, as with everything in life, the love-15-30-40-game scoring didn’t come out of thin air, and there is a reasonable story behind this unique system. A story that Daria Gavrilova tries to explain in less than a minute on TikTok. She is also presenting herself on YouTube. E.g., with a motivational TED Talk Sydney speaks, where she explains how she stays motivated even when she can’t play. She recorded this speak while she was injured, months away from competition, followed by lockdowns in Victoria, Australia.

Daria Gavrilova also kept herself busy during the lockdown by educating herself. While she locked up at home in Melbourne, she’s stayed busy and active by improving on the court, in the gym, and the virtual classroom. Furthermore, she’s one of many players who are taking advantage of WTA University. Trying to figure out what she wanted to learn, she found out that WTA University offers s lot of courses through SAP’s Litmos technology. Courses that can help players develop their physical and mental health for personal and professional growth. Gavrilova is just 27 but has been exploring her interests outside of the tour, especially during the five-month shutdown, and now that her comeback plans are in limbo with Australia in another intense lockdown. The WTA offered her many possibilities, including college-level courses from Indiana University East and the University of Florida. Players like Caroline Dolehide and Cici Bellis have both benefitted from IU East and the college degree offered by the University of Florida. Gavrilova decided to take advantage of a University of Florida course on athlete development, hoping that it could directly influence her post-playing career. Basically, the course is all about how you can be a specialist in athlete development. Daria is considering following this path to one day be able to train and help a little new young Dasha.

As mentioned earlier, Daria Gavrilova is very active on Social Media, so let’s look further into that. Gavrilova has made a lot of funny and infamous tennis parodies on TikTok. If TikTok had awards for screenwriting and acting, Daria Gavrilova would probably be a contender to the first price. On the video site TikTok, she hilariously portrays a wide range of the under-the-radar moments in sport, such as a funny parody of a sore loser. This reenactment of a player coming back to the locker room after he/she has beaten the opponent in a match and acts in a way everyone despises. Additionally, she has been on Instagram several times complaining about her future husband’s love of golf. She admits that she is a little jealous and claims that when it comes to golf, Luke chooses golf over her and generally gives it first place over everything else. Last but not least, a little something on Daria Gavrilova’s eating habits. In an interview, Luke Saville, her future husband, was asked about her eating habits and answered that he wasn’t sure, but that she likes seafood and that she more or less eats everything.