Missile near home tests Kostyuk’s fragile victory

Marta Kostyuk’s French Open run has been fueled by hard-won wins and equally hard moments: a missile struck near her parents’ home in Kyiv during her match on Day 4, and in the weeks since, she’s been trying to turn years of mental strain into a career resurge

When Marta Kostyuk stepped on court for her Day 4 French Open match against Oksana Selekhmeteva, she carried something no athlete can train for. Shortly before the 6-2, 6-3 win, a missile struck near her parents’ home in Kyiv during a bombardment from Russia.

Kostyuk didn’t hide what that morning had cost her. During her on-court interview at the French Open. she said she was “incredibly proud of myself today. ” and then pointed to the distance between triumph and devastation: “This morning. 100 meters away from my parents’ house. a missile destroyed the building.”.

She described sitting with the reality as the match was approaching, not knowing how she would handle it. “I didn’t know how this match was going to turn around for me,” she said. “I didn’t know how I would handle it. I’ve been crying part of the morning.”

Her answer wasn’t a performance-ready script. It was a look outward—toward people enduring the unthinkable every day. “I think it’s important to keep going,” she said. Her biggest example. she said. was Ukrainian people who wake up and keep living their lives. keep helping those in need. “I woke up in the morning today and I looked at all these people who woke up and kept living their lives. ” she said. “My friends from Ukraine came as well.” She added: “Not much I can say.”.

That mix—grit on court. shock off it—sits at the heart of what Kostyuk has been building since her own breaking point in late 2025. In a video interview from her Monaco home earlier this month. the 23-year-old described an exhibition loss to fellow Ukrainian Elina Svitolina in India last December as the moment she had had enough. She told her coach. Sandra Zaniewska. that if she didn’t “kick on the following year. ” Kostyuk would consider quitting tennis.

“I kind of hit rock bottom,” Kostyuk said. She described the feeling as skin coming off—painful and layered. “It feels like I’m literally shedding my skin,” she said. “Like it’s coming off. and I have to rip it. and it’s very painful because you hit these very deep. emotional things that are difficult to process.”.

She said she had been dealing with it for four years, “layer by layer, more things come up,” and that by the time she spoke with her coach, she felt like she had tried everything. “I’ve been dealing with this shedding for the past four years,” she said. “I’ve tried everything that there is.”

Five months later, the results have started to look like a different player. Kostyuk—ranked No. 26 at the time of that “rock bottom”—is now in a much changed position: she has won her past two events. the Rouen Open and the Madrid Open. the latter a WTA 1000 tournament just below the Grand Slams. By doing so. she trebled her career total of WTA titles. helping to dispel the idea that she wasn’t mentally tough enough to reach the kind of career her talent suggests she should have.

Before arriving in Paris, she skipped the Italian Open because she didn’t want to risk aggravating a leg issue. In doing so. she showed the same mix of caution and urgency that runs through her story: even a decision that protects her body is also part of keeping her mind from spiraling. At the French Open, she began Day 4 on an 11-match winning streak as the world No. 15.

Still, the resurgence didn’t arrive cleanly. Kostyuk’s challenges didn’t end with her conversation in late 2025.

In 2026, she lost to Elsa Jacquemot in an Australian Open first-round match after reaching a final-set tiebreak. She had torn a ligament in her left ankle during a match that lasted 3 hours, 31 minutes. Later, after another early loss at the Miami Open in March, she and Zaniewska had another frank discussion. Data commissioned from an analytics company suggested her performance in 2026 warranted a place in the top 10. but her ranking didn’t reflect it—she was No. 28.

“I was like, ‘Yes, Sandra, it’s great — but where are the results? I’m not even close, I’m No. 28. The math is not mathing,’” Kostyuk said.

After Kostyuk won the Madrid Open title, Zaniewska’s response carried a familiar promise. “See, I told you,” she said with a smile. “Just wait.”

That wait has been longer than a few months for a player who first caught global attention as a teenager. Kostyuk reached the third round of the 2018 Australian Open at 15. with a junior career running alongside her professional rise—she was the defending girls’ singles champion at the same time. Her mother guided her through the early years. including her expectations. and Kostyuk described the chaos of growing up as she tried to juggle everything: teenage life. training. and intense emotion.

“I was very energetic,” she said. “I did 100 things in a day. I was very emotional, very sensitive. I mean, still am, it’s just different. When you’re a child, you process things differently.”

She said she felt “crazy” about that pace. The struggle to fulfill her potential until this year. she added. was “the majority of the time mental.” She described the tight link between doubt and performance: “If there are some things that you doubt. or you’re not sure of. it’s not easy to beat that even with physicality.”.

Even in the middle of tennis’s brightest stages. Kostyuk has had to manage a life where emotion can’t be neatly compartmentalized. The first major turning point, she said, arrived in February 2022 when Russia first invaded Ukraine. She called the early days “a horrendous time. ” saying “every day felt like an eternity” with the news and the public demands that came with it. The tour side of it, she said, was “very complicated and very frustrating,” and took “up a lot of energy.”.

After the Sunshine Double of the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells. Calif. and the Miami Open. she said she returned home drained and had “suicidal thoughts” that were “really difficult for me to control.” Over the next four years. the war remained a constant preoccupation—“a low hum punctuated by sharp shocks.”.

Her family’s movement into Monaco and back also carried its own kind of strain. Kostyuk said her mother and sister came to live near her in Monaco when the war began. but they moved back to Ukraine after struggling to settle. She described the difficulty of relocating—finding a place in a new environment, language, people, and culture. With most of her family and friends in Ukraine. including her 74-year-old father. she returns to visit “a couple of times a year. ” making a drive from Poland that can take between 10 and 17 hours. Kostyuk last visited in April.

She said there have been no major attacks while she has been at home. but she has practiced amid air raids. with drones and explosions audible in the distance. “You live day by day,” she said. “You don’t know what’s going to happen. It’s not stable, ever. Some days are fine, some days they’re worse. Sometimes something triggers me really bad.”.

That volatility is part of what makes her story so gripping: even the gestures that normally belong to sports can be warped by war and politics. Ukrainians and Russians compete more often against each other in tennis than in any other individual sport. and Kostyuk described how post-match handshakes exposed those tensions. Ukrainian players stopped shaking hands with Russian counterparts after the invasion. and Kostyuk said her compatriots extend that approach to players who’ve changed nationalities but not denounced the war.

She said that after Vladimir Putin’s invasion. facing Russian players at first felt “very emotional.” “Especially when you knew … we know a lot of inside information within the tour. what someone thinks. what someone said. what’s someone’s opinion. ” she said. “So against some players, it was even more difficult to play.”.

Kostyuk’s biggest win of her career—her Madrid Open final earlier this month against Russia’s Mirra Andreeva. the world No. 8—came with its own cultural math. Everyone knew Kostyuk and Andreeva would not shake hands at the end. Still, Kostyuk said the trophy ceremony and post-match speeches created complications.

Her husband hoped Andreeva would lose to Hayley Baptiste in the semifinals because he wanted “to have a really nice ceremony, really good vibes.” After Kostyuk won the title, she said nothing about Andreeva in her victory speech.

Instead, she explained her focus on compassion for Ukraine. “Whether I win or I lose, I never had a problem acknowledging my opponent,” she said. “But in that moment when I’m on the stage. and I give a speech. I want to be compassionate with people in Ukraine. who are almost daily being bombarded by Russia and Belarus.” She added: “People are dying. people are suffering. It’s a terrible, terrible situation, and in that moment, my heart is with these people, so I just cannot.”.

Tennis authorities have yet to align with the International Olympic Committee’s recommendation that Belarusian athletes play under their flags. And beyond that ceremonial tension, Kostyuk has also followed the political pressure shaping players’ public statements. She said there are seven Ukrainian players in the top 100. and after Svitolina’s Italian Open win earlier this month. they have won the last two big WTA events. She said when Oleksandra Oliynykova claimed the WTA had threatened her with disqualification and fines over her comments about Russian and Belarusian players. Kostyuk reached out to check on Oliynykova’s well-being.

For the next couple of weeks, the task is simpler to say and harder to live: Kostyuk will try to focus on the French Open. But her track record here has been uneven. Since reaching the fourth round in 2021, she has won just one match in four visits.

The pressure this year is the kind that arrives with a label—“a potentially make-or-break year”—and she feels it. but she also credits the progress to what she did during the most difficult parts of 2022. “I came to my mom. and I said. ‘Listen. I really need to find a therapist because I’m just not handling it anymore. ’” Kostyuk said. “I made the decision in just a matter of days. I was like, ‘OK, this is not good, I need to deal with this, and that’s it.’”.

She said she believes change requires awareness: “I don’t think it’s possible to change without being conscious about it.” It took her years to change her perspective on life. tennis. and herself. She also described an identity trap performers can fall into—believing that poor results mean they are “a terrible person” and “not worth anything.” She said she lived that way. “because … we lose every single week.”.

Her perspective echoes Madison Keys, the American player who was similarly tipped for greatness as a youngster. After Keys won her first Grand Slam at the Australian Open last year at 29. she explained that starting therapy and separating results from self-worth had brought a fundamental shift in her freedom on and off the court.

Kostyuk has similar tools. She said many avenues helped her reframe her emotional character on and off the court. including her coach. Zaniewska. and her Christian faith. “Even if I go through some difficult moments, some negative emotions, I realize how colourful my life is,” she said. “The spectrum of all the emotions I experience in different situations … It’s a very fun way to live.”.

She contrasted that with the drain of living without control. “If you have no control over it, it’s very difficult, and I’ve lived like this my whole life up until a certain point.”

When Kostyuk spoke earlier about “shedding” her skin—painful layers coming off—she was describing a body and mind that had been under pressure for years. At Roland Garros, she’s winning again. The hard part is that her victories don’t arrive alone. They come in the same day she can look out and know a building near her parents’ home is gone.

In Ukraine, she said, people keep living their lives anyway. In tennis, she’s trying to do the same—layer by layer, painful and unfinished, but still moving.

Marta Kostyuk French Open Kyiv missile Ukraine Elina Svitolina Sandra Zaniewska Madrid Open WTA 1000 mental health tennis