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Sandra Zaniewska and Marta Kostyuk | \u00a9 Owen Reynoldson<\/p>\nFor most of her career, Marta Kostyuk had one reflex when things went wrong. \u201cMy default was I need to change everything,\u201d she said at Wimbledon this week, into her second consecutive Grand Slam semi-final. \u201cI need to change the coach, I need to change the whole team, nothing\u2019s working, everything is very emotional. It\u2019s been like that for quite a while.\u201d Then, in July 2023, a Polish coach named Sandra Zaniewska walked into her life, and the reflex stopped. \u201cWorking with Sandra kind of healed it,\u201d Kostyuk said.<\/p>\n
At this time Kostyuk had no coach \u2013 she had cut ties with everyone \u2013 when a mutual manager arranged a trial week in Monaco before Washington in 2023. She spent that week in pieces. \u201cI was crying on the practice every single day,\u201d she has said before her Roland-Garros semi-final, \u201cand she didn\u2019t say one word about it.\u201d Every coach before had reacted the same way: \u201cThey would flip after the second practice, and they wouldn\u2019t let me do anything. They would tell me I have to change.\u201d Zaniewska did the opposite of flip. \u201cI was very surprised with how composed and calm she was when I had this storm happening in my head,\u201d Kostyuk said. \u201cShe let me be who I am.\u201d<\/p>\n
No coach, she said, ever let her be who she was<\/p>\n
That phrase \u2013 she let me be who I am \u2013 is the hinge of the whole partnership, and when it was read back to Zaniewska in an interview at Roland-Garros, it visibly moved her, because she recognised it as her own wound.<\/p>\n
Zaniewska was a modestly ranked player, a career-high No. 142 who made her Wimbledon main-draw debut through qualifying in 2012 and retired in 2017. She never played the flat, orthodox women\u2019s game. \u201cI had a heavy forehand, I played a lot of dropshots, I liked coming to the net,\u201d she said. \u201cEveryone always wanted to make me more of a \u2018female\u2019 player, a more flat-hitting player, and that never really worked.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sandra Zaniewska and Marta Kostyuk | \u00a9 Owen Reynoldson<\/p>\n
No coach, she said, ever let her be who she was \u2013 until the very end. \u201cFor the majority of my tennis life I felt like I was with someone who just misunderstood me constantly. So as a coach, I always wanted to give this to my players, to never make them feel that way.\u201d The coaching philosophy she now lists on her WTA page follows directly: the best coaches don\u2019t create the best players, they create the best humans.<\/p>\n
If that sounds soft, the results are not. Zaniewska is not a feelings coach who happens to be in the box; she is a proven builder. Full-time with Petra Marti\u0107 within a year of retiring, she took the Croatian from No. 90 to a career-high No. 15 across 2018\u20132019, with a maiden WTA title in Istanbul and a Roland-Garros quarter-final.<\/p>\n
Marta said : \u2018I\u2019m still twenty-eight in the world\u2019. And I said, \u2018just wait\u2019<\/p>\n
What she brings Kostyuk is a cold, data-first method under the warm surface. \u201cWe never make results goals,\u201d she said. \u201cI always think results are just a side effect of the things you do.\u201d What they measure instead is granular: ball speed, points finished at the net, the winning percentage behind first and second serve. It was that data, not a hunch, that told her Kostyuk was about to erupt. \u201cIn March she was very close to being top ten in the stats,\u201d Zaniewska recalled. \u201cI told her \u2013 in Miami, after she lost to Rybakina \u2013 and she was like, \u2018yeah, but what the hell, I\u2019m still twenty-eight in the world\u2019. And I said, just wait.\u201d Kostyuk won Madrid weeks later and reached the Roland-Garros semis. Her only loss in three months.<\/p>\n
The deepest work, though, was on the thing that used to sink Kostyuk: tying her worth to the scoreboard. \u201cI\u2019ve done a lot of very deep work on understanding where my worth is coming from,\u201d she said this week after qualifying for the quarters defeating Krueger. \u201cIt\u2019s not coming from being a tennis player.\u201d She calls it harder than anything on court. \u201cChanging these habits was the most difficult thing I\u2019ve ever had to experience. Playing tennis is much easier than doing this, because it takes much longer, much more work, much more self-awareness.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n
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Marta Kostyuk, Wimbledon 2026 | \u00a9 Action Plus \/ PsNewz<\/p>\n
Zaniewska\u2019s role in that is not to fix it but to hold steady while Kostyuk fixes herself. When Kostyuk arrives at practice with tears in her eyes over the war at home, Zaniewska does not push. \u201cI cannot relate to this \u2013 I don\u2019t have a family living in a country under attack,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m not trying to give opinions or advice; that would be hypocritical. I\u2019m here to give her a hug, and that\u2019s it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Grass was not for KostyUk<\/p>\n
This fortnight brought another proof of that effectiveness \u2013 on grass, the surface that had always humiliated Kostyuk. \u201cA lot of years I played here, I played horrendous,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was a really complicated relationship with this surface.\u201d Losing every practice set in the build-up, she turned to Zaniewska for a verdict. \u201cI go: \u2018can you please tell me, honestly, right now, if you think grass suits my game?\u2019 She said, 100%.\u201d Kostyuk is an all-court player, her coach highlights. She will play the semi-finals on Thursday against Linda Noskova \u2013 and Wimbledon grass had been, of all things, Zaniewska\u2019s own worst surface as a player.<\/p>\n
A No. 142 from Katowice, a 2009 junior Australian Open doubles finalist alongside Aleksandra Kruni\u0107: Zaniewska never wanted to coach at all \u2014 \u201cI\u2019d given my life enough to this sport already\u201d \u2014 and yet is now becoming one of the biggest names in the business, exceptional at the one thing done to her that she refused to repeat.<\/p>\n
That was the first moment where I thought: okay, this is really cool. I\u2019m loving it\u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you get hurt in any way in life, you can use it both ways,\u201d she said. \u201cEither you hurt more and become the same, or you do the total opposite and go completely the other way. For me it\u2019s such a strong thing that I went completely the opposite way.\u201d That instinct \u2013 to give her players the freedom no one gave her \u2013 is what she measures herself by, above any scoreline. \u201cFor me, her feeling this way is much more important than any result she will ever achieve.\u201d<\/p>\n
And the special moments are what convince her it was worth it. Zaniewska had hers early in her first partnership, courtside on Court Philippe-Chatrier, watching Petra Marti\u0107 win. \u201cThe court that I dreamt of being on, that I watched Rafa win on so many times as a kid, still as a really little girl \u2013 and now I\u2019m sitting here experiencing all this, being the closest person to the player on this journey,\u201d she said. \u201cThat was the first moment where I thought: okay, this is really cool. I\u2019m loving it.\u201d<\/p>\n
She is one of vanishingly few women coaching at the top of the WTA, and she is clear-eyed about why there won\u2019t soon be parity: the travel, she says, collides with the families women are more often expected to raise. But she is not done reaching. Asked whether she would coach on the men\u2019s tour one day, once her time with Kostyuk ends, she did not hesitate.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would love to. I think it would be an incredible challenge \u2013 a very different game, a very different way of communicating. I\u2019d be very happy to get a chance like that.\u201d Since Am\u00e9lie Mauresmo coached Andy Murray (2014-2016), no woman has coached a top man. But we may now know who\u2019s next.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For most of her career, Marta Kostyuk had one reflex when things went wrong. \u201cMy default was I…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":790656,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-790655","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\/790655","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=790655"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790655\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/790656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=790655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=790655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=790655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}