Playing for Ukraine, Elina Svitolina has intensified her focus—which helped her soar past Iga Swiatek

"War Made Me Stronger:" Elina Svitolina Doesn't Have Time To Lose Anymore

Can you be born again as a tennis player at age 28? Elina Svitolina is proving that it’s possible. Everything about her life has changed in the past year. And that, in turn, has changed everything about her on court.

Her country has been invaded. She has married and become a mom. She has taken several months off. She has a new coaching team, led by former player Raemon Sluiter. She even “changed a few things with my racquet and my strings.”

On Tuesday, all of those factors helped send her soaring past WTA No. 1 Iga Swiatek 7-5, 6-7 (5), 6-2, and into the Wimbledon semifinals.

“Everything, like, clicked together,” Svitolina said.

It starts with her country. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began, she has made it her mission to play every match with her country front of mind. That could weigh on a player, and at times during this tournament Svitolina been jittery in important moments, especially in her third-set-tiebreaker win over Victoria Azarenka of Belarus on Sunday. But as any Davis Cup or Billie Jean King Cup player knows, it can also purify your focus.

When you play for yourself, you can throw a fit and sabotage yourself mentally, and no else is hurt but you. When you play for your country, you owe it to millions of people to do whatever needs to be done to win. Against Swiatek, Svitolina trailed 5-3 in the first set, blew an easy game point by bunting a drop shot into the net, and barely lost the second-set tiebreaker. But she never lost her composure or strayed from the job at hand.

I felt like she’s playing differently than before, than when we played on clay a couple years back…She put pressure on me. Iga Swiatek on Elina Svitolina

“I know that lots of people back in Ukraine are watching,” Svitolina said. “I got really massive amount of messages from last round…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.”

At the same time, Svitolina says she’s a little less likely to panic or throw a tantrum on court, because she understands more than ever that a sport is a sport. It’s not a war.

“I think war made me stronger and also made me, like, mentally stronger,” she said. “Mentally I don’t take difficult situations as like a disaster, you know? There are worse things in life. I’m just more calmer.

“I think having a child, and war, made me a different person.”

In the past, Svitolina may have lost some hope when she went down a quick break in the first set to the No. 1 player in the world. This time, she took the initiative in the rallies, identified Swiatek’s faltering forehand as the shot to go after, and won four straight games for the set. In the past, she might have crumbled after losing an ultra-tight second set, when she was just a couple of points from the win. This time, she kept pounding Swiatek’s forehand, and raised her game to a place where, on this day, her opponent couldn’t go. She closed with a flurry of winning serves and backhands.

Swiatek also noticed something new in Svitolina’s game.

“I think Elina was just overall playing aggressively and giving it all in every shot,” Swiatek said. “I felt like she’s playing differently than before, than when we played on clay a couple years back…She put pressure on me.”

Wimbledon is a place where the real, modern world is kept at bay as much as possible. The all-white clothes, the lack of advertisements, the old-fashioned surface, the museum-style grounds: Together they make time seem to go in reverse. With her run to the semifinals, Svitolina has injected some of the real world into the old club.

When you’re an athlete from Ukraine, you can’t pretend that politics and sports shouldn’t mix. With her wins on Sunday and Tuesday, she has shown us the power that’s possible when you bring them together.