For the first time in her career, the Ukrainian reached the quarterfinals of a Grand Slam tournament and there she fought with dignity against the fourth racket of the world
Ukrainian tennis player Marta Kostyuk shared her impressions of her historic performance at Australian Open 2024.
Let us remind you that the 21-year-old athlete reached the quarterfinals of a Grand Slam tournament for the first time in her career. There she lost in three sets to the fourth racket of the world, American Coco Gauff.
“I think it’s just a tennis match. I’m here to grow, learn, become better. Yes, I’m very proud of myself. For myself, I won today and I think that’s the most important thing. This is just the beginning of the season. I’m looking forward to what’s ahead. Yes, today was a great match with Coco. One more fight. Unfortunately, I couldn’t win today, but I played a very, very good tournament. Yes, let’s move on. This is tennis.”
“I lost the first set, which was a little painful, you know. The lead was 5:1. Set point when the score is 5-2. Then there was a very, very good opportunity at 6-5, but I just didn’t take it well enough. Psychologically it wasn’t like that… it’s your debut quarter-final, you lose the first set and you think: “Oh, it’s okay, it was a good fight.” Now we can go home. It hurt and I just thought I wouldn’t be able to sleep thinking about that forehand for probably a couple of days.”
“Then, I came back from 5-2, she served for the match. I think it was just, you know, now I’m not going to think about that forehand tonight because at the end of the day, that’s not what decides the match. Everyone makes basic mistakes. Everyone wins very heavy points. For me it’s a victory because I played with one of the best girls in the world. And I managed to get very close. It’s like it feels far away, but at the same time very close. I consider this entire tournament a big victory for myself. I’m waiting to see what happens next.”
“I think that [украинские] the girls performed very well. I hope, you know, that we can be successful in most tournaments, especially the big ones where there’s a lot of media.”
“I think people need to be reminded [о войне в Украине]. Before the match, I was watching the news and had the thought that, most likely, there would be a big rocket attack again. When I left the court, I looked at the news again, and again, I don’t know how many missiles there were, too little time had passed…. But yes, I corresponded with some people from Kyiv. I asked: “How are you? How are you doing?” They replied: “Well, we were looking (monitoring) between your score and where the missiles were flying.” My parents are still there, my sister is still there. So it’s still happening, it’s not over yet.”
Earlier, Kostyuk defeated the “neutral” tennis player Maria Timofeeva in the 1/8 finals of the Australian Open 2024. Marta became the youngest Ukrainian (21 years old) to play in the quarterfinals of the Australian Open.
Let us remind you that another Ukrainian, Dayana Yastremska, continues to perform in the single women’s bracket. Tomorrow, January 24, she will fight for the right to play in the semi-finals with the sensational Czech Linda Noskova, who previously knocked out the world number one Iga Sventek from the bracket and then defeated the number one Ukrainian racket Elina Svitolina on a refusal.
Source: Sportarena
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