Now, nearly two years after Russia invaded Ukraine, Elena Svitolina’s life has settled into a familiar rhythm.
Missile attacks from Russia usually happen overnight, so as soon as she opens her eyes in the morning, she grabs her phone to see where the bombs have landed. Someone called her grandmother in Odessa. No matter how many times Svitolina asked, her grandmother refused to leave her home and her cat.
She spends time with her 15-month-old daughter, Skai. There are many hours of training. She receives calls related to her own business and many more related to fundraising and relief efforts in Ukraine, made possible through her work with United24, Ukraine’s main war relief fundraising organization The president had called the organization to request her assistance. Sometimes the events would last late into the night, ending after she put Skye to bed and had dinner with her husband, French tennis player Gael Monfils.
It’s a lot, but Svitolina, the 2023 Women’s Tennis Comeback Player of the Year, insists she’s lucky. Her parents and in-laws help Skai, as well as many others who help her with disaster relief efforts and her other pursuits. And all the soldiers, the people she grew up with, are doing a very hard job.
“I have a lot of friends, male friends, who are on the front line,” Svitolina, 29, said in a video interview from Monaco, where she is preparing for the 2024 season.
In 2023, there are tennis players who have won more matches and made more money than Svitolina, and there are tennis players who have received more accolades. But it’s hard to think of another player who would have had such a shocking and impactful year, a stunning journey back from the minor leagues to the center court at Wimbledon, during which tennis fans and those who paid little attention She was worshiped in a unique and unbridled way by those around the sport.

Svitolina was hugely popular at Wimbledon (Julian Finney/Getty Images)
Are the cheers for Wimbledon men’s champion Carlos Alcaraz as loud as those for Svitolina when she reached the semifinals at the All England Club or when she reached the quarterfinals at Roland Garros a few weeks ago? of course not.
This is a different Svitolina, maybe even better than the Svitolina who rose to world No. 3 in 2017 and won the WTA Tour final the following year. Svitolina has no steely grit, drive or purpose, because for those few days last July, when Svitolina became the biggest story in the sport, or any sport, there was a new guarantee In matches against Grand Slam champion Victoria Azarenka and world No. 1 Iga Swiatek, she hit the ball with forehand and backhand in the most tense moments. There’s a calmness about her as she floats from one game, one moment to the next.
“This whole drive around me, working on different types of projects with my foundation, United24 and all the people who support me, I’ve had tremendous support from Ukrainians and around the world, which really inspires me to pursue more, Really do it. Push yourself,” she said. “I found myself in the French Open quarter-finals and then in the Wimbledon semi-finals, playing great tennis and motivated, with fresh thinking and fresh energy.”
No one saw this coming. Here’s a player who’s just given birth to a baby, and much of her focus is on motherhood and the trauma her family and country have endured. No one in the sport foresaw Svitolina’s rise in the rankings so quickly, if at all.
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Well, actually, that’s not entirely true.
Last January, three months after Skye was born, Svitolina contacted Raymond Sluter, a respected Dutch tennis coach, to see if he would consider hiring her. While others may see the challenges of returning from childbirth, Slote sees the opportunities. There is no doubt about Svitolina’s talent. No one rises to third in the world and wins the end-of-season title by accident. But there was another dynamic at work that made working with Svitolina so attractive for Slote.
Because the tennis offseason is so short, players rarely have a lot of time to really train and practice and think about changes to their game.
“If you really want to change something, you have to shorten the season,” Slote said in a recent interview.
When she initially got the call, Svitolina had no plans to return to competition within the next three months. Slote sees this as her golden opportunity to evolve. He told her not to worry about his busy life off the field. He said all she needed was to be dedicated and focused on tennis during training.
“I’ll spend 30 minutes doing quality training instead of two hours just going through the motions,” Slote said. “It’s about being aware and being very present.”
If Svitolina got tired or felt overwhelmed, he would tell her to take a day off. Considering everything going on in Svitolina’s life, Slote knew this was a special player and person.
Fast forward a few months. Entering October, Svitolina’s 2023 tennis journey has come to an end. Her ankle stress fracture began during the French Open, worsened during Wimbledon, and became debilitating on North American hard courts, forcing her to end her season after the U.S. Open.

Svitolina celebrates winning match point against Daria Kasatkina at Roland Garros (Julian Finney/Getty Images)
At this time Svitolina told Monfils that she wanted to go to Ukraine. Her husband was understandably scared and wary. “Even though this is my country, it was still difficult for him to realize that I wanted to go back, that I wanted to go to that country where there was a war,” she said.
Monfils finally figured it out, and in November Svitolina embarked on the arduous 10-hour train journey to Ukraine for 10 days, first to visit her grandmother in Odessa, then to Kiev and Dnipro, where she met government officials and caught up with old friends before heading to Kharkiv, just 20 kilometers (about 12 miles) from the Russian border.
Svitolina moved there when she was 12 years old to train as a professional tennis player and pursue her career. She goes to visit her old coach and the club where she first played and spend time with the kids who now train there and live on in the war.
“It’s a big motivation for me to see that life in Ukraine is still going on; they have an indestructible spirit and nothing can really bother them, nothing can destroy their spirit,” she said.
“When I play a tough game, it’s really a huge motivation for me. When I face tough moments in life, I always remind myself of the people who had to deal with war, who had to deal with losing their homes. , you know, just trying to really survive and live a normal life. And of course, the soldiers who have weapons in their hands to defend our country.”
After returning home and with her ankle healed, Svitolina returned to work. Slote once again viewed the injury as an opportunity to give Svitolina a longer offseason to refine and develop her game without the pressure of returning to competition.
Slote isn’t proposing anything radical, just doing more of what she started doing last year.
“She can approach the game with a more aggressive mentality and try to control the game more and play it more on her own terms rather than on her opponent’s terms,” he said.

Monfils and Svitolina get married (Pascal Le Segretain/SC Pool – Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images)
By mid-December, Svitolina was able to play “90 percent pain-free,” although she was still worried about how her ankle would feel on the hard courts at the ASB Classic in Auckland, where she was playing before the Australian Open. Major adjustments, and how sharp she is. possible. It was basically hard for her to win during the first six weeks after returning from the postpartum period. She found her groove in Strasbourg in late May, a week before Roland Garros.
So far, so good.
Svitolina made her first major tennis road trip in Auckland under Skye, winning her first four matches in Auckland, two of them against former Grand Slam champion Carolina Wozny Archie and Emma Raducanu, then lost in the final to recent Grand Slam champion Coco Gauff, who ultimately won 6-7(4), 6-3, 6-3.
“I play with more freedom,” Svitolina said last month. “Before, I was a tennis player from Ukraine. But now, it’s very different. Different motivations, different goals. For me, it’s important to seize the opportunity every day, in every training, every match Give 100 percent effort in the game and do my best.”
(Top photo: Hannah Peters/Getty Images)