Elina Svitolina Is Still Here to Win

For years, the fear of losing followed her onto the court. Through motherhood, difficult returns and the decision to step away, Svitolina has been learning how to pursue a Grand Slam while making room for the rest of her life..

During her pregnancy, Elina Svitolina remembers sitting with her psychologist and considering the possibility that she might never return to tennis.

There was something else to talk through. She had not won a Grand Slam.

“So maybe I’m not even going to come back to tennis, and I didn’t win a Slam,” she remembers saying.

The conversations helped her look at the career she had already built: the years of consistent work, the effort she had put into giving herself a chance. Gradually, she became more comfortable with the possibility that her playing days might end without that title.

“I’m gonna be fine. I had an amazing career.”

Her partner, Gael, helped, too. They talked about the same question, and he reminded her that one Grand Slam would not define how good a player she was. Svitolina could acknowledge the value of her career and still want more from it.

That distinction matters to her. When she has spoken about being able to live happily without winning a Slam, she says some of the coverage has interpreted it as a lack of belief. She wants her position understood clearly.

“The point is that I believe that I can win a Grand Slam.”

She believes she has the level to sustain her tennis across the two weeks it takes. She intends to give herself the best possible chance. She also wants a happy life if the title never comes.

Holding those ideas together has taken years. Long before pregnancy, long before the conversation with her psychologist, Svitolina was working on a more immediate problem: how to walk onto a tennis court without being scared to lose.

Learning to play to win

At the beginning, tennis was a way to get her parents’ attention.

Her brother, nine years older, was already playing when she was born. The family watched matches, talked about champions and spent hours around the court. While her brother trained, she played in a sandbox nearby.

A coach suggested that she join a group of children who were playing. She tried it. It was fun, and it gave her something she wanted.

“Come on, I want some attention,” she says, recalling her younger self.

Later, she wanted to be better than her brother. As tennis became more serious, there were other comparisons to make. Her mother was competitive and pointed to young players who were progressing faster or reaching the top 100 sooner.

Svitolina remembers the instruction: “You need to catch up.”

At twelve, she moved from her hometown to another city. Initially, she was there alone; her mother joined her later. A sponsor helped pay for travel and training, providing support that made a significant difference. Alongside it came the pressure she felt to produce results.

She describes the thought simply: “I need to win almost every match.”

Winning Roland Garros juniors at fifteen brought an early achievement, but the move into professional tennis remained difficult. At sixteen and seventeen, she was excited about joining the tour. She imagined people talking about the young player who had won in Paris.

“But then nobody cared, you know.”

She had to establish herself in smaller tournaments, including events in Turkey and Tunisia. Coming from Ukraine, she says, she did not receive many wild cards. Across the net were women who understood the tour and had the maturity to handle its demands.

The progress came in stages. Winning at one level gave her confidence to move to the next. She began to accumulate evidence that she belonged.

Yet that growing confidence existed alongside a fear of making mistakes. For years, she played safely, trying to keep the ball in and avoid the error that felt so costly.

“The mistake was a disaster for me,” she says.

Her own inner instruction followed her into matches: “Oh, don’t miss, don’t miss.”

At the top of the game, that left her facing opponents who were prepared to take risks while she was trying to prevent something from going wrong. On important points, she needed the freedom to act.

The work of changing that began before motherhood and, she recalls, before she entered the top ten. Different coaches, mental training, experience and a growing understanding of herself all contributed. She cannot reduce it to one breakthrough.

The fear still returns sometimes. What has changed is her ability to respond to it, to speak to herself and redirect her attention towards what she wants to do.

Her aim is to compete with the intention to win, knowing she will give her best.

Starting again

Grand Slam disappointment could once consume the weeks that followed.

Svitolina recalls winning Rome, arriving at Roland Garros in strong form and being number three in the world. The circumstances seemed to promise an opportunity. When the title did not come, the disappointment was difficult to put aside.

She describes periods when she did not want to do anything for around two weeks and felt like quitting tennis. Finding her way through those feelings required work beyond the practice court.

It also required an honest assessment of what happened on it. Looking back, she believes she lost more matches by playing too safely than by being too aggressive. Taking a chance at least allowed her to feel that she had gone for the result and given everything.

Pregnancy brought another opportunity to consider what her life might contain.

She was unsure about returning. Tennis had not been feeling good, and the war in Ukraine had left her mentally exhausted. Her attention was occupied by events back home and by the unfamiliar experience of preparing to become a mother.

For eight months, she stepped away from tennis. She focused on her health, organized her daughter’s room and spent time in the pool in Switzerland. She also considered what she might do if she did not come back, or if a return did not go well.

Those were possibilities she had time to think about. Her future could include work and interests beyond the tour.

When she did begin training again, Gael was rebuilding too, after an injury. They started on January 1. Initially, being back on court together felt good. The ball was coming off her racket well.

As the intensity increased, she had to adjust to her body and to unfamiliar pains. Competition then introduced a further set of demands.

Practice matches could tell her something about her tennis. Tournament matches asked more of her. The nerves returned, the pressure returned, and her body responded differently. She needed to recover the ability to keep her attention on the point in front of her.

Sometimes her mind wandered towards dinner or the shopping she needed to do the following day. Bringing it back, point after point, took strength. Recovering that match focus and fighting spirit was, she says, the biggest challenge of the return.

Her initial goal was to reach the top 100.

“I was starting from zero.”

The early results were difficult. She remembers losing for a couple of months and thinks she twice lost matches after having match points. Then came the title in Strasbourg and a semifinal at Wimbledon. She was back in the twenties in the rankings.

The speed of that progress could make the return appear straightforward from a distance. In her account, it contained weeks of difficult adjustments before the results began to arrive.

Success brought its own complication. The objectives grew. Ranking points, opportunities and the next possible achievement demanded attention again.

As she puts it, “the pressure again came.”

Her changing perspective did not make her immune to the familiar pull of expectations. She still had to recognize it and decide how to respond.

Knowing when to stop

Fighting remains central to the player Svitolina wants to be. She hopes people associate her tennis with fighting on court and fighting for trophies.

She has also learned how much continuing to push can cost.

During a later period of exhaustion, she had been struggling for months. She was not feeling good on court. The US Open had not gone as she wanted, and a disappointing Billie Jean King Cup match added to the weight she was carrying.

She describes the feeling as “mountains on my shoulders.”

The pressure she put on herself had become too much. She needed rest and time to herself. Gael understood and supported her decision to take it.

She traveled with friends, saw new places and went hiking. For a month, she did not pick up her racket.

There was still fitness, she adds, “just to be looking good, you know?”

Eventually, she felt ready to speak to her coach about preseason: where they were, what they wanted to work on, how to begin again. She trained for a month and a half, and the desire to compete returned.

When she played in Auckland after three months away from tournaments, difficult moments in matches tested that readiness. Getting through them helped her trust the work she had done.

She believes she could have forced herself to keep playing through the end of the previous season. She also believes that doing so would have left her exhausted when she reached Australia.

Learning to stop had taken time. She grew up with a strong emphasis on constant work. Tennis occupied so much of her life that doing more could feel like the obvious response to difficulty.

She advises players to pay attention when the reluctance to practice persists. A tired day may call for a short rest. If the feeling continues after a few days, or daily life starts to feel heavy too, she suggests taking more time away.

The tour offers plenty of reasons to keep going. There are tournaments to enter, points to defend and opinions about what a player should do. Svitolina brings the question back to the person who must actually walk onto the court. She has to feel ready to face the match.

She has an image for what happens when tennis and self-scrutiny take up too much space: “it’s like I have a rucksack that I’m carrying.”

Carry it for too long, she explains, and eventually it drains her. Sometimes she needs to stop and recover before picking it up again.

A life beyond the tour

There is more in her life to return to now.

Her family, foundation and interests away from competition give her other places to put her attention. Representing Ukraine remains a motivation. She wants her performances to encourage children to play sport, and values the opportunities to go back, hold masterclasses and organize tournaments for them.

She also values being able to come home and switch off from tennis.

Motherhood has made her more efficient with her time and energy. Her daughter has preschool, lessons and interests of her own. With so much travel during the season, Svitolina wants the time they share to have her full attention.

Tennis is already part of the child’s world. When her parents leave, she knows they are going to a tournament. Before their matches, she sends encouraging videos.

“Let’s go! Beat that lady or beat that guy,” Svitolina recalls her saying.

She and Gael want their daughter to discover different sports. She likes golf, too. They would not force her into tennis.

Both know the sacrifices and difficult experiences that can accompany a professional career. Svitolina wants to see what her daughter enjoys and how much she wants it for herself.

For her own career, the ambition remains clear. She wants to challenge the best players, improve her ranking and discover how far she can go. After injuries and surgery, feeling healthy enough to train well and enjoy playing has value in itself.

Her advice to a young player begins with work and repetition, but includes something she has spent much of her career learning.

“I would probably say listen to yourself a bit more.”

She also asks for patience. A good week of practice can create the expectation of an immediate result. Progress may take longer. Sometimes one match is enough to begin finding the feeling again; sometimes a player needs more time.

Svitolina wants to keep her belief high without asking every tournament to deliver the outcome she hopes for. She wants to give herself the best chance of winning a Grand Slam. She can also look at what she has already done and feel proud.

“If I finish tennis tomorrow, I have a great career.”

For now, there is more tennis she wants to play. At practice and in competition, she gives it her full attention. Then, as she describes it, she puts her bags in the car and goes home.

At home, she wants to be fully present with her daughter.