Embed from Getty Images<\/a> <\/p>\nScoring the biggest win over her career, an inspired Starodubtseva joined a successful surge of Ukrainian women in Paris.<\/p>\n
Earlier, Madrid champion Marta Kostyuk rallied past American Katie Volynets 6-7(4), 6-3, 6-3. The 15th-seeded Kostyuk scored her 13th straight victory raising her 2026 clay-court record to 13-0\u2014the only woman in the field undefeated on dirt this season. Kostyuk shared the horrifying story of how Russian missiles destroyed a building about 100 meters from her family\u2019s home prior to her first-round win.<\/p>\n
Rome champion Elina Svitolina, who survived a fierce first-round test, swept 126th-ranked Spaniard\u00a0 Kaitlin Quevedo 6-0, 6-4 for her eighth straight clay-court win.<\/p>\n
Four time French Open quarterfinalist Svitolina will face Germany\u2019s Tamara Korpatsch, who advanced to the Roland Garros third round for the first time. Svitolina said Ukrainian women are inspired by the support they receive from compatriots in their war-ravaged homeland.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn a way for me it\u2019s how I can be useful for my country, how I can help the next generation of motivating them, introducing them to sport, and helping them with that, because that\u2019s the only way that I see things going forward,\u201d Svitolina said. \u201cBecause just doing something that you cannot control everything and everybody, so in a way, me personally, I want to control what I can control is the things that how I can be useful for my country.\u201d<\/p>\n
Though Rybakina rallied from a double break down Love-3 winning six of the next eight games to edge ahead 6-5 in the decider, Starodubtseva was not fazed.<\/p>\n
Starodubtseva stamped a strong hold at 15 to force the tiebreaker.<\/p>\n
Then\u2019s when Rybakina\u2019s return game and forehand really failed her under stress.<\/p>\n
In retrospect, Rybakina said she should have tried to spin the ball more and get to net to shorten points, but as a shadow swallowed the court, Starodubtseva shined in the breaker.<\/p>\n
\u201cI won\u2019t say that physically I felt really bad. There was matches when I felt worse. Definitely the energy was not there,\u201d Rybakina said. \u201cI just couldn\u2019t find the right balance on the ball. It was very slippery. In some moments I was just putting my legs, but it was everything out of rhythm.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, it\u2019s tough to say. I think that on the practices it was not as bad. Definitely when it\u2019s so hot, the ball is flying. It\u2019s very difficult to control. Especially me being always aggressive, trying to play fast and step in, if you don\u2019t give enough spin or if your hands are not as fast, the ball is flying everywhere.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, in such condition you really need to be super patient, try to spin the ball as much as you can, and,
yeah, definitely come to the net. For me it was, as I said, too many mistakes that I can\u2019t even talk about coming to the net and all these things.\u201d<\/p>\n
The second seed committed three forehand errors in a five-point span as Starodubtseva stretched her tiebreaker lead to 6-2.<\/p>\n
A bold Starodubtseva slammed a swing volley winner for a handful of match points at 9-3.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Starodubtseva sealed a stirring win on her second match point and will meet either 26th-seeded American Hailey Baptiste or Wang Xinyu for a spot in the round of 16.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Richard Pagliaro | Wednesday, May 27, 2026Photo credit: Lintao Zhang\/Getty On a searing day, Elena Rybakina was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":688653,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-697684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=697684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697684\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/688653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=697684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=697684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=697684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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