Paris: Ukrainian tennis star Marta Kostyuk secured a straight-set victory at Roland Garros despite the emotional shock of a reported missile strike landing near her family residence in Kyiv just hours before the match.
Her first-round match at the French Open lasted 1 hour and 18 minutes, though the tennis was secondary given the situation that has surrounded her in recent weeks and months, and in recent hours too. She only discovered earlier that day that the missile had hit perilously close to where her mother, sister, and grandmother’s sister had been.
“Right now, I think it was just the closest that it has ever been to my house, and this is what probably makes it the most emotional,” Kostyuk stated post-match. “There are obviously better days, worse days, but yeah, this one was, I would say, top three worst ones.”
She stepped on court to deliver a composed performance but admitted to drifting in and out of the game when thinking about what was happening at home.
“There were times in the match where I would go back to thinking about it,” Kostyuk said. “Because most of the morning I was feeling sick, just from the thought that if it was 100m further it could be that I wouldn’t have my mom and my sister anymore.”
She suggested that the 11am match start may have been a blessing in one way, giving her limited time to process the devastating news. The usual Grand Slam opener anxieties suddenly seemed insignificance when compared to what her family was going through.
Her family spent Sunday at home trying to regain some calm following the sleepless night they endured in Kyiv.
“They feel ok,” the 22-year-old revealed. “Obviously very scary but, you know, it’s not the first very difficult night, not the last, so, you know, they are adapting.”
For many years, the Ukrainian has openly discussed the immense psychological toll of living and working while at war. Sunday was just another example of what many Ukrainian athletes are currently enduring.
“It’s definitely exhausting,” she said. “Especially when it repeatedly is happening over the night, nobody is sleeping well. People are just more irritated and scared. But generally, everyone is really angry.”
Despite the overwhelming pressure, Kostyuk’s form on the clay continues to shine. This victory has extended her winning streak on the surface to 12 matches, and her run to the Madrid title the past weekend represented her best clay-court stretch to date. Yet, life off the court cannot be easily separated from life on it, and on Sunday in Paris, the war came all the way onto the tennis court.
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–IANS
