Marta Kostyuk from Ukraine was supposed to take on Mirra Andreeva from Russia at the 2023 Négométal Open de Bourg-de-Péage, but she refused to play.
During the off-season, tennis players compete in various exhibition or invitational tennis tournaments, in which they prepare for the regular season, which begins already in two weeks.
One of those tournaments is also the Négométal Open de Bourg-de-Péage in France, where the likes of Alex de Minaur, Adrian Mannarino, and David Goffin competed in the men’s tournament, while Mirra Andreeva, Varvara Gracheva, and Donna Vekic signed up for the women’s event.
In the semifinal match, Andreeva dominantly bested Gracheva, but she wouldn’t play against Vekic in the final, as the Croatian withdrew from the tournament, and the organizers quickly had to find a replacement.
They did, and Vekic was replaced by Marta Kostyuk, however, after finding out that she was set to play a Russian player in the final, the Ukrainian changed her decision, at least according to the statement by the tournament organizers.
“Due to reasons beyond our will and given the geopolitical context in Ukraine, Marta Kostyuk will not be able to compete in the final of the 6th edition of Negometal Open.”
After Kostyuk’s withdrawal, the organizers were not able to find any player as a replacement, so they opted for an interesting choice, one that Andreeva probably did not expect going into the tournament.
The 16-year-old teenage prodigy will play against a man, world no. 1145 on the ATP Tour, and currently ranked 74th on the ITF Tour, a player from home club Peageois, Yanis Ghazouani Durand.
“We’ve done our best to activate our network of professional players, but the time is unfortunately too short to find a replacement. So we took the decision to compete our Peageois Yanis Ghazouani Durand against the young prodigy Mirra Andreeva.”
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