Last Thursday, Dayana Yastremska awoke to the sound of bombs falling. The Ukrainian port city of Odessa, where the 21-year-old lives with her parents and younger sister Ivanna, was under attack from Russian forces. It would be three days before she slept again.
With explosions rocking the city, the family took shelter in a nearby underground car park. After two days, Yastremska’s father, Alexander, had seen enough. Before the war erupted, he had intended to accompany Dayana, the world No 128, to this week’s WTA event in Lyon, for which his daughter had been given a wildcard. Now he determined to send his wife Marina and their two daughters to France while he stayed in Ukraine.
A harrowing journey to the Romanian border followed, at the end of which Dayana and Ivanna, 15, bade farewell to both their parents after Marina made a last-minute decision to remain with her husband.
“I don’t know how everything will end, but you have to take care of each other,” Alexander told his daughters. “You have to build your new life.”
After a tearful farewell, Yastremska continued the journey to France with Ivanna, a promising junior on the ITF circuit, by boat and then air.
“We were shocked, but at the same time we didn’t want our father to stay alone there,” said Yastremska. “Ivanna started to cry a lot, and I had to keep my emotions under control because I took a big responsibility.”
Granted a wildcard for the doubles, the sisters were beaten 6-2, 6-4 on Monday by Georgina Garcia-Pérez of Spain and Switzerland’s Xenia Knoll. But on Tuesday evening, Dayana pulled off a remarkable victory in her opening singles match, prevailing 3-6, 7-6 (9-7), 7-6 (9-7) against Ana Bogdan of Romania after saving two match points.
It would have been a notable comeback at the best of times; in the circumstances, it was an extraordinary display of courage, tenacity and self-belief. Never a player to hold back, Yastremska snatched both match points from Bogdan’s hands with typically bold play. Serving at 5-6 in the second set, she retreated deep into her backhand corner to smoke a forehand winner, denying the Romanian a straight-sets win. Yastremska repeated the trick with Bogdan leading 7-6 in the climactic tiebreak. By then, she had blown three match points of her own, her anguish evident as she relinquished a 6-3 lead, missing a pair of forehands before hitting her first double fault of the set.
When the final point was won, after three hours and five minutes, the sense of relief was palpable. As her sister celebrated at courtside, Yastremska fell to her knees, overcome by emotion, before sharing a warm embrace with Bogdan and draping herself in a Ukrainian flag. The hardest match of her life, she would later call it.
“Definitely I’m going to remember this match,” said Yastremska in her on-court interview, acknowledging that leaving her parents behind had been “very tough emotionally”.
“I’m happy that I won for my country, and at the same time I’m very sad,” Yastremska added.
“My heart stays at home and my mind is fighting here, so it’s very difficult to find the concentration, to find the balance and everything.
“This win, compared with what is going on in my country, is nothing. But I’m happy, at least, that I’m also fighting for my country. I’m very proud of the Ukrainians, they’re really heroes.”
Yastremska’s sentiments were echoed by her compatriot Svitolina, who later beat Russia’s Anastasia Potapova in the opening round of the Monterrey Open. Svitolina, who won 6-2, 6-1, said she was on a mission for her country.
“I think it’s my mission to unite our tennis community to stand with Ukraine, to help Ukraine because what we’re going through is a horrible thing for all Ukrainians,” said Svitolina, the former world No 3, who is donating her prize money from the tournament to the Ukrainian army.
“That’s why I’m here. That’s why I’m playing for my country and doing my best, using my platform and using my resources to introduce that, and trying to invite people to support Ukraine.”
Svitolina, the world No 15, only went ahead with the match after the sport’s governing bodies followed the International Olympic Committee’s recommendation only to allow Russian and Belarusian players to compete as neutral athletes. Wearing the blue and gold colours of her country’s flag, she cut a focused and hugely determined figure, never allowing her intensity to drop off.
“For me, playing the match here, I’m not playing only for myself,” said the Olympic bronze medalist. “I’m playing for my country, I’m playing for the help of the Ukrainian army and people in need. Every victory that I’m going to get is going to be very special.”