It’s time to consider whether Elina has made Svitolina an even better tennis player by having a child and taking a year away from the sport to raise money to help her compatriots in Ukraine.
She says yes, and there’s no reason not to believe her.
Svitolina’s improbable run at Wimbledon continued in grand fashion on Tuesday. Two days after Svitolina, a new mother who needed a wild card to enter the tournament, defeated former world No. 1 Victoria Azarenka from Belarus in an emotional and dramatic triumph, Svitolina defeated the current world No. 1 world, Iga Swiatek.
Svitolina, playing with grit, steeliness and a higher aim, matched the hard-hitting Swiatek shot for shot, and then some, on the most hallowed pitch in the sport, sending glee through a crowd that had been with her since her first shot of a tournament she thought would be over for her now.
When the match was over, Svitolina put a hand to her face, hugged Swiatek from across the net and raised two arms to the crowd, shrugging in disbelief.
“I don’t know what’s going on right now,” Svitolina told them a little later.
Some things are hard to explain.
Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine 18 months ago, Svitolina announced she was taking a break from professional tennis as she was pregnant with her first child with her husband, Gaël Monfils, the veteran tour pro and tennis showman from France.
Tennis was hardly a priority back then. Her pregnancy topped the list, as did raising money for war relief in her home country. Her foundation has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars since the war began.
In October, she and Monfils announced the birth of their daughter Skai. Not long after, Svitolina began training and practicing for her return to the WTA Tour, at the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells in March.
Things didn’t go well at first, as she lost six of her first seven matches, but Svitolina – a graceful and deceptively powerful player who was ranked third in the world rankings as recently as 2019 – slowly began to regain her senses. for the ball and for the game.
And she made it clear especially during the French Open in Paris that tennis is no longer about money or ranking points. It was about trying to bring some joy to the people of Ukraine.
She did enough when she reached the quarterfinals at Wimbledon. Yet she had made it past the second round there only twice in eight attempts and had not raced on grass since 2021 until last month. Her hopes were so low that she bought tickets to a Harry Styles concert last week, assuming she would be free.
She wasn’t, and after her win over Swiatek on Tuesday, she said she didn’t think she would accept the pop star’s offer to invite her to a concert anytime soon.
“It was very sweet of him,” she said of Styles’ offer. “Hopefully I can go one day.”
In any case, it will have to wait until after her semifinal on Thursday against Marketa Vondrousova from the Czech Republic, who defeated Jessica Pegula from the United States in three sets. A victory over Vondrousova could very well lead to a showdown in the final with a player from Belarus (Aryna Sabalenka) or with Elena Rybakina, the defending champion, who grew up in Russia but represents Kazakhstan. Sabalenka and Rybakina will play their quarterfinals on Wednesday and are big favourites.
However, that is lurking and would certainly create tension similar to that seen in Svitolina’s fourth-round victory over Azarenka. Players from Russia and Belarus were barred from taking part in last year’s tournament and, while generally warmly received, Svitolina and the other players from Ukraine have refused to shake hands with players from those countries.
Azarenka was booed off the field – undeservedly, Svitolina said – after Svitolina beat her on Sunday, even though Azarenka gave Svitolina a thumbs up after the final point. Last year, Azarenka offered to take part in a charity fundraiser for war relief, though players from Ukraine told her not to. But the boos were still raining down.
Swiatek, who is from Poland and a staunch critic of the invasion, has done more than any non-Ukrainian player to aid war relief efforts.
But there was no lack of healthy tension on Tuesday. Swiatek, four-time Grand Slam tournament champion, seemed to be in control early on, even serving for the first set at 5-4. She then missed a string of hesitant and wild forehands and first serves. Svitolina continued to make her shots on tight wires, clearing the net again and again for the rest of the afternoon.
She won 16 of the last 18 points in the first set. As the roof closed in rain on the way, a panicked Swiatek walked to the corner of the track and begged her team for answers.
“I felt like I’m making pretty much the same mistakes,” Swiatek said. “I wanted a tip, which they think I should actually focus on. Sometimes when something doesn’t work it’s hard to find a reason because there might be a few reasons.”
The main reason was Svitolina, who later said that she played with a different kind of inspiration. She had been watching segments of videos of her child in Ukraine watching her matches on a phone for the past two days. She knows what her victories mean and where they fit into the big picture.
All of that has a power.
“War has made me stronger and mentally stronger as well,” she said. “I don’t look at difficult situations as a disaster, you know? There are worse things in life. I’m just calmer.”
Don’t doubt it: she’s dying to win, but her experience of the pressure has changed.
“I look at things a little differently,” she said.
After she left the job, she called Monfils via FaceTime, who — along with her mother and his — is caring for their daughter in one of their homes. She said Skai hadn’t talked to her much. She was distracted by a serving of ice cream.
Can she win this tournament and the biggest prize of all?
She insisted, as she did after the Azarenka match, that she was not supposed to go that far. She doesn’t let her husband come because he hasn’t been here yet, and she doesn’t mess with her routine now. Who actually needs him when she has a different goal and power, especially against those opponents from Russia and Belarus?
“Every time I play against them, it’s a big motivation, a big responsibility,” she said. “At the moment it is very, very far. It seems very close, but it is far from this.”