Lesia Tsurenko of Ukraine during her match against German Jule Niemeier. Credit … Adrian Dennis / Agence France-Presse – Getty Images
WIMBLEDON, England – Lesia Tsurenko’s Wimbledon campaign ended on Friday during a match in which her boss was elsewhere.
Tsurenko, a 33-year-old Kyiv tennis veteran, had been watching the news from home all week and saw that the Russians had bombed a mall and other civilian targets.
“They are just trying to kill as many people as possible,” Tsurenko said of the Russian army.
Since February, he had improved on not thinking about the Russian invasion of Ukraine when he was on the tennis court, but Friday was a bad day. She said she felt unbalanced from the moment she woke up, “as if there was no earth under my feet.” And once he got on the court against German Jule Neimeier, he said he “had no idea how to play tennis.”
Juggling the constant travels and physical and mental routine of professional tennis is difficult even for the best players. For Ukrainian players these days, who have not been home for months and who spend much of their free time receiving updates on the health and safety of friends and family at home, the challenge is monumental.
The good news for Tsurenko is that he seems to have found a semi-permanent home in northern Italy, at an academy run by famed coach Ricardo Piatti. She has an apartment. Her sister, Oksana, recently joined. So did her husband, Nikita Vlasov, a former military officer, who is ready to return as soon as he receives the call but for now the forces don’t need anyone at his level.
“We have no problem with people,” Tsurenko said, a while after his defeat. “The problem is heavy weapons.”
Tsurenko left Ukraine before the war began, so technically she is not a refugee. Recently, he had to miss a tournament in order to stay in Italy and submit paperwork that would allow him to stay there. She is waiting for approval. In addition, his mother, who lives near Mykolaiv in southern Ukraine, does not want to leave, despite heavy bombing. The mother of her sister’s husband also lives there.
His time playing tennis in England last month has given him a respite. Russian and Belarusian players were unable to compete at Wimbledon. Knowing how popular President Vladimir V. Putin remains in Russia, Tsurenko has assumed that some of the Russian and Belarusian players are likely to support him. It has been better, he said, not to run into them in the locker room, although he will soon do so when the WTA Tour moves out of Britain and they return to competition.
There have been many matches since the war began on February 24 when Tsurenko wondered what he was doing even playing tennis. Highlights include a particular match in Marbella, Spain. That morning he had seen a photo of an administrative building in Mykolaiv with a massive hole in a missile attack. The image could not be removed from the head.
Lately, however, he has found clarity. He has always played tennis because he loves the game. The riches that sport offered never motivated her. Now they do.
“Now I play for money,” he said. “I want to win so much so I can give it,” he said, “I think it can be poor quality, because it has nothing to do with tennis, but that’s what I’m playing.”
By the time he reached the tournament, Tsurenko, who has four WTA titles and has won more than $ 5 million, had won $ 214,000 so far this year. Doing the third round at Wimbledon earned him an additional $ 96,000. For player 101 in the world, this is a solid month’s work. She hopes there is more ahead this summer.