The Best Thing I Saw at Roland Garros Today: Late-bloomer Yuliia Starodubtseva pulls off Rybakina upset

On Wednesday in Court Suzanne Lenglen, two women in the crowd held up a brightly decorated card with Elina Svitolina’s name on it.

There was just one issue: The player they were rooting for was Yuliia Starodubtseva.

Wrong name, right country, good problem to have.

That’s how it has been for supporters of Ukrainian women’s tennis this spring. Presumably those fans spent the early afternoon watching Svitolina win inside Court Philippe Chatrier, then moved over to Lenglen to see Starodubtseva make a long-shot attempt at beating No. 2 seed Elena Rybakina. Imagine their surprise when they got two victories for the price of one.

In truth, Starodubtseva’s win shouldn’t come as a shock. Like her countrywomen Svitolina and Marta Kostyuk, the 26-year-old late-bloomer is having an excellent season. She has reached a career-high No. 53, and made her first final, at the 500 on green dirt in Charleston last month.

“I think that clay is not the worst surface for me,” she said with a self-effacing smile after her 6-3, 1-6, 7-6 (10-4) win.

Read More: The Best Thing I Saw at Roland Garros Today: Home hope Moise Kouame breaks through

Starodubtseva didn’t hone her clay skills the same way most pros do. In 2023, fresh out of Old Dominion with a Masters in sports management, she found herself in the same situation as so many of her fellow graduates: Looking for a job. Making matters much worse, her hometown, Kakhovka, was occupied by Russian troops, giving her no way home.

Instead, Starodubtseva settled in as a teaching pro, on green clay, in Westchester County, NY. Even hitting balls out off a hopper, though, her talent didn’t go unnoticed. Friends in New York started a GoFundMe page, “Support Yuliia’s Tennis Dream,” that raised $25,000. Her ranking has climbed ever since. According to her, if she makes the leap into the Top 50, her boyfriend and coach, Pearse Dolan, says he’ll propose.

“He’s getting scared now,” she laughed. “I’m getting close.”

As steady as her success has been, the tennis road is an especially lonely place for Ukrainian players.

“I still have family back home,” Starodubtseva told wtatennis.com. “I haven’t been home for four years. Really miss home. Haven’t seen my dad for four years, my grandparents.

“It’s been hard.”

My boyfriend is my coach, and he told me if I break through to Top 50, he'll propose... He's getting scared now! I'm getting close. Starodubtseva on her coaching team

Starodubtseva said she steeled herself to believe she could win before she walked on court today.

“I was trying to go into this match with this mindset, you know, try not to give too much respect, even though she’s a great player,” she said.

When Rybakina handed her an opening in the second set, she jumped all over it—and then hung on for dear life. Ahead 3-0 in the third, she weathered the expected storm from the world No. 2, kept making balls and shrugging off errors, and stepped in when the opportunity arose. Up 6-3 in the deciding tiebreaker, she took a high forehand and drilled it for a winner.

“She’s one of the top players, you can’t be thinking that it’s gonna be easy,” Starodubtseva said in her American-inflected English. “Even at 3-0, I had a feeling that it might not be easy.”

By now, tennis players from Ukraine are used to things not being easy. Maybe that’s why there are so many of them for their fans to root for.