Wimbledon is a busy time of year for anybody connected with tennis, but imagine combining this with running a restaurant in the same area and looking after three children.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The other job\u00a0<\/a>Keeping Ukraine on the map<\/a><\/p>\n I met Evgeniy Zukin at the All England Club on Saturday afternoon. In the blistering heat, he was smartly dressed in a suit, watching those from his native Ukraine play on the outside courts. Zukin was a former top-10 player at the national level during his junior years before moving away from the sport to pursue a Master\u2019s degree, partly due to financial constraints. He remained connected to tennis by coaching and umpiring numerous events. In 2013, he was asked to be the CEO of the Ukrainian Tennis Federation, which is a role he accepted and continues to do.<\/p>\n Zukin spoke with me shortly after watching Daria Snigur play her third round match. She lost in straight sets to Ashlyn Krueger, who is ranked 25 places lower than her at 102nd in the world.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe have just one (player) left in singles now. Having seven women in the main draw is an amazing achievement anyway,\u201d\u00a0he tells Ubitennis. \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe hoped that at least a couple of players would stay until the second week, but unfortunately, it didn\u2019t work, but Martha is playing very good and we hope she goes further.\u201d<\/p>\n Marta Kostyuk is the player carrying the hopes of her country at SW19. She is enjoying a strong season in which she won a WTA 1000 title in Madrid before reaching the semi-finals at the French Open. \u00a0Kostyuk, who was taken to three sets in her previous two rounds, faces\u00a0Krueger on Monday.<\/p>\n \u201cEven though grass has never been her favourite surface, it looks like she is on a good wave. So she can get some good results this time,\u201d\u00a0Zukin said of his compatriot.<\/p>\n In his role as CEO, Zukin attends matches but doesn\u2019t often interact with players during the tournament. This is because they are with their own teams and are concentrated on the tournament. Although he doesn\u2019t mind this as it provides him with\u00a0\u2018a great opportunity to come and see life, the matches to support.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n The other job\u00a0<\/p>\n A 10-minute drive away from The All England Club lies Zukin\u2019s other job, which is somewhat different. He is the owner and co-runs the OY Bar, which is located on Wimbledon Broadway. It is open seven days a week and serves\u00a0\u2018local British produce with standout ingredients and influences from continental Europe.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n So how did the CEO of a national tennis federation end up in the restaurant business?\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a bit of a crazy idea,\u201d\u00a0Zukin admits.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI think everybody wants to open some kind of cafe bar restaurant. Just to try themselves out in this business because it\u2019s exciting.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWith my wife when we started it. It\u2019s a challenging environment, let\u2019s put it this way. But it\u2019s really interesting. We enjoy it as well. The more things you know in life, the more different things you do, the better. So this is another education you get.\u201d<\/p>\n There is another motivation for opening such a business \u2013 to help settle in with the community. Zukin and his family fled his homeland after the Russian invasion in 2022. The national tennis club that he and his wife set up was destroyed as a result of the conflict. Through a friend he was invited to stay in Tooting, London. He still lives around this area now.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a socialisation for us as well,\u201d\u00a0he continues.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cTo know the community better, to do something for the community as well and Integrate, more.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cMe and my wife are members of a nearby Tennis Club. This is another form of integration and getting to know new people. We do play for a tennis club in the National League and Surrey League, whatever it is. This is our hobby, but it\u2019s very much linked with my work.\u201d<\/p>\n Credit has to be given to Zukin for how he managed to balance the two jobs. Although he admits \u2018he never counts how many hours he works in a day.\u2019 If this wasn\u2019t enough, he is also a father-of-three.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe have two small children. I have three children. One is 16 years old, and the others are four and one. This is another big job to do. \u00a0We don\u2019t have any relatives, it\u2019s just us and we need to manage.\u201d\u00a0He said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Keeping Ukraine on the map<\/p>\n Sporting bodies have suffered as a result of the ongoing war, which is the deadliest in the world since World War two. The UN\u2019s Human Rights Office recently reported that at least 16,126 people have been killed and another 46,590 injured since February 2022.<\/p>\n In tennis, the Federation\u2019s largest financial backer is its president,\u00a0Serhiy Lagur. As a result of the war, Ukraine\u2019s currency has also weakened\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe did have some donations from other nations and from the ITF, but now it\u2019s almost all gone,\u201d\u00a0Zukin explains.<\/p>\n \u201cWe didn\u2019t have any government money for almost two years, and the last two years, it was just a little bit but this is for the National Championships. They cover, just partly, the expenses for some teams.\u201d<\/p>\n Times are hard without a doubt but Zukin remains determined.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe need to keep Ukrainian tennis alive. Keep on going, participate in all the competitions we can, to show our flag everywhere in as many tennis arenas as we can. To participate well in the Billie Jean Kind cup and Davis Cup.\u201d\u00a0He concludes.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wimbledon is a busy time of year for anybody connected with tennis, but imagine combining this with running…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":781970,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-781969","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\/781969","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=781969"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/781969\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/781970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=781969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=781969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=781969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}