Elina Svitolina: 10 things to know about the newest mother on tour

After a year-long absence from the tour to become a mom—she gave birth to her daughter, Skaï, last October—Elina Svitolina, one of the top names in women’s tennis over the last several years, makes her comeback at the WTA 500 event in Charleston this week.

Here are 10 things to know about the Ukrainian star as she begins the newest chapter of her tennis career as a mom-on-tour:

She’s a former world No. 3. She first got to No. 3 on September 11th, 2017, and she also spent time at that ranking in 2018 and 2019—she was also ranked as high as No. 4 in 2020 and 2021. She’s the highest-ranked Ukrainian player in WTA rankings history.

At one point, she was in the Top 10 every single week for almost four and a half years. She was in the Top 10 every day from May 22nd, 2017 to October 31st, 2021, which was 202 consecutive weeks on the WTA rankings (not including the 20 weeks the WTA rankings were frozen due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020).

She has 16 career WTA titles, the biggest one coming at the WTA Finals in 2018. She won the season-ending championships in Singapore that year, defeating five consecutive Top 10 players en route to the title. She’s also a four-time champion at the WTA 1000 level, at Dubai, Rome and Toronto in 2017 and Rome again in 2018. Pretty much all she's missing in her trophy cabinet is a major title...

She’s an incredible 16-3 in finals. The only three women to beat her in a WTA final are Agnieszka Radwanska (2016 New Haven), Petra Kvitova (2016 Zhuhai) and Ashleigh Barty (2019 WTA Finals).

She’s a two-time Grand Slam semifinalist. Her best major results came at back-to-back majors in 2019, at Wimbledon (falling to Simona Halep) and the US Open (falling to Serena Williams). She was the first Ukrainian woman ever to reach a major semifinal.

She’s reached six more Grand Slam quarterfinals, too. Two at the Australian Open (2018 and 2019), three at Roland Garros (2015, 2017 and 2020) and one at the US Open (2021). She barely missed out on the semifinals in two of those—she held match point against Halep in the 2017 Roland Garros quarters, and lost to Leylah Fernandez in a third set tie-break in the last eight at the 2021 US Open.

She has six career wins over world No. 1s. Her most famous victory over a No. 1 came at the Rio Olympics in 2016, where she defeated Serena Williams in the third round. Her other five wins came against Angelique Kerber (three times) and Simona Halep (twice).

Speaking of the Olympics, she was the bronze medalist in Tokyo in 2021. She defeated future Wimbledon champion Elena Rybakina in the bronze medal match, battling back from 6-1, 3-1 down against the Kazakh to claim her spot on the podium, 1-6, 7-6 (5), 6-4.

She was a Grand Slam champion in the juniors. She won the 2010 Roland Garros girls’ title as a 15-year-old, beating future world No. 2 Ons Jabeur in the final. She also reached the 2012 Wimbledon girls’ final, finishing runner-up to future world No. 5 Eugenie Bouchard.

She’s No. 19 on the WTA’s all-time career prize money list. She’s won $21,418,949 over the course of her career, and with Nos. 13-18 on the list all retired, watch for her to keep climbing up.

Svitolina will play Kazakhstan’s Yulia Putintseva on Monday in her first match in exactly 375 days—her last match was a second-round defeat to Heather Watson in Miami on March 24th, 2022.