Ukrainian French Open star becomes ‘honorary Frenchwoman’ in fairytale run

Elina Svitolina has become the story of Roland Garros and cemented herself as the honourary last French player standing. The former world No 3 gave birth just eight months ago and returned to competition in April. Now through to the quarter-final, French fans are claiming her as their own as she is married to ATP star Gael Monfils.

Svitolina has been enjoying a fairytale run at the French Open – a tournament she used to arrive at as one of the title favourites. But it’s a different story for the Ukrainian this year, who came in as the world No 192 after making her return from pregnancy just two months ago.

The 28-year-old has managed to match her best-ever result in Roland Garros, reaching the last eight for the fourth time. She did it by earning her first top-10 win since April 2021, defeating ninth seed Daria Kasatkina 6-4 7-5(5) on Sunday.

And Svitolina’s run has been made extra special by the fact that the Parisian crowd is taking her in as their own after France was left without any singles players in the men’s and women’s draw after the first week. “Last French player standing,” the former world No 3 smiled when a reporter said some of the fans saw her as one of their own.

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Svitolina – who picked up a title in Strasbourg the week before Roland Garros – has been married to French tennis star Monfils for two years and the pair welcomed a daughter in October. “I cannot be more thankful for all your support,” she told the Court Suzanne Lenglen crowd in an emotional post-match interview on Sunday.

“Now I can feel what Gael was experiencing for all these years and I’m really thankful for all the French people to support me so much.” Later, the Ukrainian pro admitted that she didn’t expect to get such a reception but started to feel the love in Strasbourg.

“I have been with Gael for over five years now. I didn’t expect that it would come like this year,” she said. “Yeah, but in the end, just thankful for the crowd to be there for me, even though it was some matches I was one set down and coming back to win, they are cheering me on and giving me this push and this hope that I can come back and can win.”

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Svitolina was ranked outside of the world’s top 1000 when she made her comeback in April and is already set to re-enter the top 80 with her run to the quarter-final. And she is enjoying the freedom of playing the French Open with no expectations.

“Of course me personally I put kind of pressure for myself because I want to win a Slam. This is the ultimate goal for me. But definitely not the pressure from outside,” she explained.

“No one, you know, expects that, you know, I’m going to come into Roland Garros and make quarter-final at the beginning of the tournament. Like I don’t think many people would say, Yeah, you know, she’s gonna do it. That’s why I feel like this really helps me. I feel almost like I’m 17 again coming on the tour fresh. I’m not defending any points. Not here, not next week.”

Svitolina will face her toughest test yet in the next round – second seed Aryna Sabalenka, who won the most recent Grand Slam in Australia. But the 28-year-old new mum has already exceeded all expectations in her run so far and will be able to count on the crowd support when she meets the world No 2 on Tuesday.

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