Indian Wells, California – Marta Kostyuk, the best -classified Ukrainian tennis player in the world, attracted the home favorite Robin Montgomery for her first match at the BNP Paribas Open Friday.
By listening to the crowd at the Stadium 4, the match could have been in kyiv, not in California: they were there for Kostyuk, the world number 24, from the first ball to the last when she was beating Montgomery 6-1, 6-3.
It was not a little thing for a Ukrainian player enduring one of the most tumultuous weeks of his country’s war against Russia, since the large -scale invasion of Vladimir Putin in early 2022.
Last Friday, President Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine, has undergone a scouring attack by American president Donald Trump And the vice-president JD Vance at the Oval Office. With rolling television cameras, they criticized Zelensky for not having been “grateful” enough for American aid and ridiculed him for trying to use the lever effect they said that he did not have.
“You don’t have the cards. You will either conclude an agreement or we have released, “Trump told Zelensky.
He then announced a break in American military aid in Ukraine.
Sudden cuts from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) had already affected the flow of humanitarian aid, after Trump managed Elon Musk, a “special government employee” and his government ministry (DOGE), which bears the name of an internet that features a dog, to close this agency.
After this confrontation of the White House, Kostyuk said that his phone had been flooded by American friends and knowledge – some in tennis, a lot outside – expressing empathy.
“Many messages and many apologies, which is incredible,” she said at her press conference after beating Montgomery. “It’s incredible to see this, that people always support us.”
Three years after the war at home, Ukraine tennis players felt almost all the emotions they could feel.
The concern is never far from them. At the end of the afternoon at Indian Wells late Friday after having turned the Triple Finalist of the Grand Chelem Ons Jabeur 6-3, 6-1, Dayanana Yastremska opened her phone to demonstrate how she follows the developments.
She has leafed through a series of applications, including the Telegram messaging service, which keeps her up to date on the latest missile attacks, and the alarms that warn the citizens of her hometown, Odesa, to go to bombs shelters. Her sister, her father and grandparents still live there, so Yastremska checks the alerts as soon as she wakes up every day before calling home. She repeats the process once her games are over.
The news was particularly bad last week because the growing split between the Trump and Zelensky administration embarked on the forces of Russia.
“After what happened that day, the attack on Ukraine has become higher than before, and in my city, it is the same thing,” she said. “It’s very intense. So many days, we have no light and water. »»
Yastremska was in Ukraine just a few weeks ago. She traveled there after the WTA tournament in Linz, Austria, to celebrate the 18th anniversary of her younger sister Ivanna. Ivanna was also a professional tennis player, but is now at the university who studies journalism while pursuing a singing career.
Dayana had to fly from Austria to Chișinău, capital of Moldova, before crossing about five hours on the other side of the border to reach Odesa. If Odesa was easier to reach, she would go home in the blink of an eye, she said, war or no war.
“I love my city,” she said.
Last Friday was particularly trying for Yastremska, who landed in San Francisco from Europe to the news of the disastrous meeting of Trump / Zelensky. Then, immigration officials told him that someone had pointed out that his interpol passport was stolen. This invalidated her 10-year-old visa to enter the United States, and was almost returned to Europe for four hours of argument to solve the problem.
In the end, she received a six -month visa to master it; She will have to extend this if she wants to return to the United States to play the US Open in August.
“Day crazy, crazy. I was thinking of exploding, ”she said.
She didn’t do it, of course. And a week later, she was beating a major triple finalist in two sets, to organize a match on Sunday against the five -time champion of the Grand Chelem Iga SwiTek, who won two of the last three BNP Paribas.
She, Kostyuk and Elina Svitolina, who also won here on Friday, had three years of learning to face this kind of danger.
“We are Ukrainians, we have this kind of character that we are able to browse difficult situations,” explains Yastremska. Or at the very least manage them, and sometimes even find a silver lining.
Kostyuk had a broken heart when this meeting of presidents went so badly. But she has since come to kiss the idea that so many people in the United States wanted to help very soon after the attack on Russia, and always do it. “It is important to remember that it was not a person who decided to help Ukraine and to be an ally of Ukraine, but many people,” she said. “And I am very grateful for all these people.”
There is a Kostyuk saying to come back, on and off the field. “Everything will be fine, and if it does not go, it means that it is not the end,” she said.
Nor does it forget that everyone in tennis has their own problems and must understand how to leave those on the side of the court and approach their work professionally. There is a good chance, she says, your opponent spends very little time to worry about your mental state or the trauma of your life.
“Everyone goes through something in their life,” she says. “Whether it is war or some of their loved ones do not feel well or do not die or problems in the family. It is very important to put everything outside the court aside and go there and do the work you do. »»
With that, Kostyuk had left to prepare for another day at the office – Rendez -vous de la Ronde of 32 Sunday with another American opponent, Caroline Dolehide.
There is a good chance that she will obtain a lot of support in that one too.
This article originally appeared in Athletics.
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