Marta Kostyuk arrived early. At 15, ranked No. 521, she qualified for the 2018 Australian Open and reached the third round, the youngest player to win a main-draw match in Melbourne since Martina Hingis in 1996. The game has always been bold: she takes the ball early, hits a fast two-handed backhand, and plays with an intensity that can slip into risk. It took until 2023, in Austin, for that talent to produce a first title.
She won that Austin final against a Russian opponent and offered no handshake; since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine she has refused them from Russian and Belarusian players, and remains one of the tour's most direct voices on the war. In 2026 the results caught up: titles at Rouen and Madrid, her first at WTA 1000 level, then a 17-match winning streak that carried her past Iga Swiatek and Elina Svitolina and into the Roland Garros semi-finals, the first for a Ukrainian woman in Paris. That June she reached a career-high No. 12.
Twelve. That is the tiebreak score that sent Karolína Muchová into her first Wimbledon final, saving a match point along the way and beating Coco Gauff 6-2, 1-6, 7-6(10). She will play Linda Nosková, a 6-4, 6-4 winner over Marta Kostyuk in the other semi-final, for the title on Saturday. Both finalists are Czech, so whoever wins, the Wimbledon women's trophy is going home with a Czech name on it.
Wimbledon notebook