To make the biggest breakthrough of her career, Marta Kostyuk had to do two of the hardest things tennis can ask of a player in the space of three days. First she had to beat the queen of this tournament. Then she had to beat her own friend.
The queen was Iga Swiatek — four-time champion, the woman who has owned this clay for half a decade. Kostyuk knocked her out in the fourth round, 7-5, 6-1, the earliest Swiatek had lost in Paris since 2019. That alone would have been the result of Kostyuk's life. But the draw was not done with her. Waiting in the quarter-final was Elina Svitolina, her compatriot, her friend, the elder stateswoman of Ukrainian tennis — and to go where no Ukrainian woman had ever gone, Kostyuk had to beat her too.
She did. 6-3, 2-6, 6-2. And with that win, Marta Kostyuk became the first Ukrainian woman in history to reach the semi-finals of Roland Garros. Take a moment with that. The first. Ever.
What she just did
The bare facts are remarkable enough on their own. Kostyuk beat Svitolina 6-3, 2-6, 6-2 in the first all-Ukrainian quarter-final ever played at Roland Garros, to reach a maiden Grand Slam semi-final and become the first woman from her country to get this far in Paris.
But the bare facts undersell the run. This was not a player sneaking through a soft section of the draw. Kostyuk arrived in the last four having beaten the four-time champion and then her most accomplished compatriot back to back — and she did it riding a 16-match winning streak on clay this season, a run so good that the only other woman to manage as many in a single clay season since the WTA rankings began was Justine Henin in 2005. That is the company Kostyuk is suddenly keeping. Henin won Roland Garros that year.
The week she quietly took the tournament apart
While the headlines this week went to Diana Shnaider toppling the world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka, and to the general collapse of every favourite in the women's draw, Kostyuk has been doing something more methodical and, in its way, more impressive: she has been beating the best players left standing, one after another, and barely anyone has been talking about it.
Iga Swiatek had spent the spring rebuilding her game around a new coach, arriving in Paris looking like the old, untouchable version of herself on the surface she loves most. Kostyuk beat her in straight sets and never let the four-time champion settle. In three previous career meetings, Kostyuk had not taken a single set off Swiatek. This time she took the whole match. That is not a fluke; that is a player who has found a level.
The all-Ukrainian quarter-final
The match against Svitolina carried a weight that had nothing to do with rankings. These are two women who have carried the same flag through the most difficult few years imaginable for their country, who know each other well, who have stood beside one another at countless tournaments. To meet in a Grand Slam quarter-final — the first all-Ukrainian quarter-final in Roland Garros history — and to know that only one of them could go through, is the kind of bittersweet that sport occasionally serves up and never makes easy.
Svitolina, the elder of the two, is one of the most respected players of her generation — a former world No. 3, a mother who came back to the top of the game after having her daughter, the player many would have called the more likely of the pair to make this breakthrough. That it was Kostyuk who came through, in three tense sets, makes it a passing-of-the-torch moment as much as a win. And it adds another chapter to the remarkable story Ukrainian tennis has been writing at this tournament — a group of players competing at the highest level while carrying things most of their rivals will never have to think about.
Whatever you feel about everything happening off the court, the sporting fact is clean and worth celebrating on its own terms: a 23-year-old from Kyiv just became the first woman from her country to reach the semi-finals of the French Open.
Into the most open women's draw in memory
Kostyuk now walks into a semi-final stage that looks like nothing the women's game has produced in years. With Swiatek, Coco Gauff, Elena Rybakina and Sabalenka all gone, a first-time Grand Slam champion is guaranteed — and Kostyuk is one of the four women left with a real, live chance of being it. She is set to face the 19-year-old Mirra Andreeva, while on the other side of the draw Shnaider meets the qualifier Maja Chwalinska.
For a player who had never been past the quarter-finals of a major before this week, two wins from a maiden Grand Slam title is the kind of opportunity that does not come around twice. The pressure shifts now — she is no longer the underdog knocking off favourites; she is one of the favourites herself, in a draw with no favourites left. How she handles that is the next chapter. But she has already done the hard part: she has proven, across the most demanding week of her career, that the level is real.
What is confirmed, and what is just mood
Confirmed: Marta Kostyuk (Ukraine, 23) beat Elina Svitolina 6-3, 2-6, 6-2 in the first all-Ukrainian quarter-final in Roland Garros history, becoming the first Ukrainian woman to reach a Roland Garros semi-final. Earlier in the tournament she beat four-time champion Iga Swiatek 7-5, 6-1 in the fourth round — Swiatek's earliest Roland Garros exit since 2019 — having never previously taken a set off her in three meetings. Kostyuk's clay-season winning streak reached 16 matches, the most by a woman in a single clay season since Justine Henin in 2005. With Swiatek, Gauff, Rybakina and Sabalenka all out, a first-time women's Grand Slam champion is guaranteed. Kostyuk is set to face Mirra Andreeva in the semi-finals.
Just mood: whether Kostyuk can take the final two steps. She has beaten the champion and her toughest compatriot to get here, but a semi-final and a final are their own kind of pressure, and she has never been to either at this level. The level is proven. The nerve, at this altitude, is the question the next few days will answer.
The bottom line
Some breakthroughs arrive gift-wrapped by an easy draw. Marta Kostyuk's did not. To become the first Ukrainian woman ever to reach a Roland Garros semi-final, she had to beat the four-time champion and then her own friend and countrywoman, back to back, on the sport's most punishing surface, in the most pressured week of her life. She did both, and she did them while almost everyone was looking at the other upsets.
She is two wins from a Grand Slam title now, in a draw that has thrown out every name that was supposed to win it. Whatever happens on Thursday and, if she gets there, on Saturday, Kostyuk has already authored one of the quiet masterpieces of this wild fortnight — a week in which a 23-year-old from Kyiv beat the best, beat the closest, and walked into history. Keep your eyes on her. The biggest match of her life is still to come.
Sources
- Tennis Majors: Kostyuk beats Svitolina in the first all-Ukrainian quarter-final at Roland Garros, becoming the first Ukrainian woman to reach the semi-finals
- Roland-Garros official: Kostyuk steers past Svitolina into semis
- Roland-Garros official: Day 10 match of the day — an all-Ukrainian affair
- CNN: Marta Kostyuk stuns four-time champion Iga Swiatek on big day for Ukraine
- ESPN: Marta Kostyuk stuns Swiatek, KO's last former French champion
- Tennis Majors: How the loose Kostyuk beat the tense Swiatek at Roland-Garros
- CNN: Meet the surprise semifinalists at this year's ridiculous French Open
- WTA: Roland Garros 2026 order of play and results
Photo: Marta Kostyuk at the 2023 US Open / Hameltion / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0
