Dinara Safina back on tour as a coach following her brief stint with Diana Shnaider

Former World No. 1 Dinara Safina will embark on a new adventure as a coach on the WTA Tour, following a brief collaboration with Diana Shnaider during 2025. The 3-time Grand Slam finalist will join forces with a former top-60 player, seeking to return her to the upper echelon of the rankings following her exit from the top 100.

Safina made her first appearance as a WTA Tour coach back in April of last year, at the start of the clay swing. However, the partnership didn't last long, and barely a month later, the Russian tennis player ended the collaboration with Safina.

“She gave me a lot of those tips on how to stay focused in a match and not to let those negative emotions ruin your game and mental skills,” Shnaider commented after ending her relationship with the former No. 1. “For sure, those are things I learned and I’ll try to use them as much as I can so I can get better each day.”

Recently, it was reported that Safina will return to the Tour with 22-year-old star Polina Kudermetova—the younger sister of Veronika Kudermetova. Polina, currently World No. 104, holds a career-high ranking of World No. 57. At the start of 2025, she reached her first WTA final at the WTA 500 Brisbane International, where she fell to World No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka in three sets.

A breakthrough season was expected for Polina, but she ultimately failed to find consistency. She had a 20-27 record for the season and barely managed to notch one Grand Slam win (US Open) and two victories at the WTA 1000 level (both during her run to the third round at Indian Wells). In fact, Kudermetova failed to qualify for the main draw of any WTA 1000 in the second half of the year—missing Canada, Cincinnati, Beijing, and Wuhan.

Kudermetova dazzled in early 2025 with an aggressive game that took her to her first WTA final at the start of the season. She also secured her first top-10 win against Daria Kasatkina and achieved a significant rise in the rankings. However, she could not maintain that good level and gathered scarce wins in the year's most important tournaments.

Now outside the top 100, Kudermetova recently changed her citizenship from Russia to Uzbekistan, joining Kamila Rakhimova and Maria Timofeeva. The Uzbekistan national team now has three players in the top 150—all under 25 with good chances of climbing the rankings.

However, this will be an especially difficult task for Kudermetova considering the large amount of points she is defending at the start of the year. The Brisbane final accounts for 300 points, and if she does not repeat the result, a drop of more than 60 places in the WTA ranking is expected. Safina's arrival brings the urgency to score points quickly at the top level, especially in major tournaments. If she doesn't reach at least the final in Brisbane, she will find it complicated to access Grand Slams and WTA-level tournaments, being forced to play Challenger tournaments for the coming weeks—or months.

Kudermetova is already working with her long-term coach, Ravshan Sultanov, a former player from Uzbekistan who will remain on the team. Safina will occupy a role as Kudermetova's co-coach, as announced by Sultanov himself on social media.

"We have strengthened the team with Dinara - she will be working with Polina. Her approach and vision of tennis are very close to ours. Dinara is a very easygoing, open, and extremely pleasant person to communicate with. As a coach, I feel very comfortable working in the same team with Dinara. She has tremendous experience as a player who reached the very top of the rankings. At the moment we have only just begun the preparation process for the 2026 season," Sultanov said.