b. 2002
Marta Kostyuk
Tennis player, 2026 Madrid champion
At 15 she came through qualifying at the Australian Open and reached the third round. In 2026 Kyiv-born Marta Kostyuk won the WTA 1000 title in Madrid, then reached the semifinals of two Grand Slams in a row.
Key accomplishments
- Australian Open girls’ singles champion
- Third round of the 2018 Australian Open at 15, the youngest player to win a main-draw match there since Martina Hingis (1996)
- Quarterfinalist at the Paris Olympics (2024)
- First WTA 1000 title: Madrid, 2026 (beating Mirra Andreeva in the final)
- Wimbledon semifinalist (2026), equalling the best result by a Ukrainian woman there
Fifteen, and through qualifying
Marta Kostyuk was born in 2002 in Kyiv. As a junior she won the Australian Open girls’ title, and in January 2018, aged 15 and ranked No. 521, she returned to Melbourne for the main event. After coming through qualifying she beat 25th seed Peng Shuai and the Australian Olivia Rogowska. No one so young had won a main-draw match at the Australian Open since Martina Hingis in 1996. In the third round she faced Elina Svitolina.
Madrid without a handshake
Kostyuk made her Olympic debut in 2024, reaching the quarterfinals in Paris. On 2 May 2026, ranked 23rd in the world, she won her first WTA 1000 title in Madrid, beating russia’s Mirra Andreeva in the final. It was her third WTA title and her second in a row: the weekend before she had won the tournament in Rouen. After the final the two players did not shake hands at the net or pose together at the trophy ceremony.
Two semifinals in a row
Kostyuk had never reached a Grand Slam semifinal before June 2026; that summer she did it twice in a row. In July at Wimbledon she beat Jasmine Paolini in straight sets and equalled the best result by a Ukrainian woman there: the semifinal Svitolina had reached twice.
Why it matters today
Marta Kostyuk carries Ukraine’s name onto the world’s biggest tennis courts and doesn’t stay silent about the war: after the Madrid final she would not shake the russian player’s hand, and she dedicated one of her matches to the Ukrainian people and their resilience. Her path from qualifying at 15 to the top of world tennis shows that junior success can grow into a senior career. Anyone starting small can see in her how far you can go if you keep going.
