This week Marta Kostyuk broke into the first 200 of the tennis world for the first time – no one has been that young since Michelle Larcher de Brito.
Marta Kostyuk won the junior title in Melbourne in 2017 and caused a stir this year at the “Adult”edition of the Australian Open with two things in particular. Out of the qualifying round – and number 521 in the world – she played herself as the youngest player since 1997 up to round three and beat Shuai Peng, who was seeded at 25 on the way.
And she spoke of never really loving tennis so much and actually just playing it to see her mother more often. Mama Kostyuk, Talina Beiko, was a professional herself and made it to 391st place in 1994, after which she worked as a trainer (Kostyuk qualified her statements during the tournament:”It’s not that I didn’t like tennis, I just didn’t enjoy it,”she said,”I loved it already, I still do that”).
Since this week, Kostyuk, managed by Roger Federer manager Ivan Ljubicic, has been standing for something else: thanks to her ITF victory at the Future tournament in Bernie last week, she is 185th in the world. At 15 years and 222 days old, she is the youngest of the top 200 since Michelle Larcher de Brito about ten years ago.
Larcher de Brito? Exactly. The one who also drew attention to herself with two things: on the one hand with her loud moans (with 109 decibels she was still ahead of Maria Sharapova at the top). If it bothers other players, I can’t do anything, I don’t want to change anything,”she once said, or” I’m here to win. If it bothers people, they can always leave the square.”
De Brito made it to 76th place in the world, took a tennis break last year after motivation problems and opened a hotel for dogs and cats. Marta Kostyuk, on the other hand, will be playing for the Ukrainian Fed Cup team against Australia for the first time this weekend – and hopefully will stay with the tennis team a little longer.