Yuliia Starodubtseva picked up the biggest win of her career at Roland Garros on Wednesday, coming from behind to stun second-seeded Elena Rybakina 3-6, 6-1, 7-6 (4).<\/p>\n
And the biggest moment of her life might not be far behind.<\/p>\n
During her press conference after the breakthrough victory, the Ukrainian told reporters that her boyfriend, Pearse Dolan — who also happens to be her coach — has promised the 26-year-old that if she cracks the Top 50 of the PIF WTA Rankings, he’ll propose.<\/p>\n
The Ukrainian, currently at No. 55 in the world, is inching closer to that mark, and she might get there with one more win in Paris.<\/p>\n
“He’s getting scared now,” Starodubtseva said with a laugh.<\/p>\n
Starodubtseva is certainly hopeful that that day will come soon, but she’s playing it cool in the meantime. And though their relationship is inextricably linked to tennis — in addition to their player-coach relationship, they met as tennis players at Old Dominion University — she’s happy for the big moment to come off the court.<\/p>\n
“I don’t pressure him at all,” Starodubtseva added, again with a smile. “I let him think on his own, whatever he wants to do. Just not on court, please.”<\/p>\n
Starodubtseva reached her career-high ranking of No. 53 back in April after reaching the final in Charleston, her first career WTA Tour Driven by Mercedes-Benz final. (She lost that match to Jessica Pegula in straight sets.)<\/p>\n
And in reaching the third round at Roland Garros, she’s matched her previous career-best result at a major, after also reaching the third round in Paris last year.<\/p>\n
On paper, Starodubtseva will be the heavy favorite in her third-round match against World No. 148 Xiyu Wang. Xiyu, a qualifier, advanced after Hailey Baptiste retired in the first set of their second-round match.<\/p>\n
This will be their first career meeting.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Yuliia Starodubtseva picked up the biggest win of her career at Roland Garros on Wednesday, coming from behind…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":698253,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593,5452],"class_list":["post-698252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-text"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698252","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=698252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698252\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/698253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=698252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=698252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=698252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}