The Ukrainian Mom on the Brink of the Wimbledon Final

Early last year, exhausted physically from injuries and mentally from watching Russia invade her home country, tennis was suddenly and profoundly irrelevant to her. Then in October of that year, she put tennis on the back burner again for a happier reason: She and her husband, the French player Gaël Monfils, welcomed their first child.

Neither of those pauses, whose significance dwarfed anything that happened on the court, would normally be the launchpad to a dramatic career revival. And yet Svitolina, after some 13 months off the tour, is most definitely back. She is a new mother. She is flying the flag for Ukraine in professional sports. And she is one match away from a Wimbledon final.

“I think having a child, and war, made me a different person,” said Svitolina, a former world No. 3 who is unseeded here and received a wild card invitation back into the All England Club. “I look at things a bit differently.”

No one is more surprised to be in this spot than Svitolina herself—she had even made plans to go see Harry Styles perform in Vienna last weekend.

But despite facing the toughest draw of any woman at the tournament, she has just kept winning. Svitolina extended the streak on Tuesday by upsetting world No. 1 Iga Swiatek on Centre Court, 7-5, 6-7(5), 6-2. With the crowd behind her, she served brilliantly to fight back from being down 3-5 in the first set and held her nerve in a tense third as Swiatek struggled to cope with her power. Svitolina will now face Marketa Vondrousova of the Czech Republic on Thursday.

What lies beyond is potentially more awkward. The list of her potential opponents in the final includes world No. 2 Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus and the Moscow-born defending Wimbledon champion Elena Rybakina, who represents Kazakhstan. Svitolina, who is from Odesa, was among the first athletes to say back in March 2022 that she wouldn’t take the court to face anyone from Belarus or Russia. And since returning, she has staunchly refused to shake hands with any opponent from those two countries. (That position saw her booed by fans at the French Open this spring following a defeat to Sabalenka.)

Taking on Swiatek presented no such issues. The Polish champion, who plays with a blue-and-yellow ribbon on her hat, has been one of the most vocal supporters of Ukrainian athletes and hosted a high-profile charity match to help humanitarian efforts last July.

“Iga is not only a great champion, she’s a great person,” Svitolina said on court. “She was one of the first ones that really helped Ukrainian people. She was a huge help for Ukraine.”

Svitolina has come this far before at Wimbledon. She also reached the semifinals here in 2019, but that feels like a lifetime ago to her now. Back in the late 2010s, she seemed like a sure thing to win a Grand Slam tournament eventually as she became a fixture in the second weeks of majors and climbed the rankings to No. 3 in the world. But she was inhibited by a tendency to choke in big moments. At Wimbledon that year, she took just four games off eventual champion Simon Halep. Then, at the U.S. Open, she reached another semifinal, only to be brushed aside by Serena Williams.

By late 2021, that elusive title still hadn’t come and she slipped out of the top 10. Then, following her back-to-back hiatuses in 2022, her ranking tumbled to No. 236 before her return at the Charleston Open in March.

That pause not only gave her the chance to step away and tweak her mechanics. It also radically reshaped her thinking on the game. After war and a child, she says, nothing that goes wrong on court is worth agonizing over anymore.

“Mentally I don’t take difficult situations as like a disaster, you know?” she added. “There are worse things in life. I’m just more calm.”

That calmness allowed her to win 20 of 22 points at one point against Swiatek, who has never been fully herself on grass courts. It isn’t the kind of performance that Svitolina seemed capable of just a few years ago. But with Monfils and her daughter watching from home—and an entire country following from a war zone—Svitolina is finding that the player she has become at 28 might be the one with a real shot to win a first Grand Slam title.

“I know that lots of people back in Ukraine are watching,” she said. “I’m happy I can bring a little happiness to their life. There was many videos also on internet where the kids are watching on their phones. This really makes my heart melt seeing this.”