{"id":393359,"date":"2026-01-27T15:39:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-27T15:39:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/393359\/"},"modified":"2026-01-27T15:39:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-27T15:39:08","slug":"australian-open-2026-elina-svitolina-brings-light-to-ukraine-with-victory-over-coco-gauff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/393359\/","title":{"rendered":"Australian Open 2026: Elina Svitolina ‘brings light’ to Ukraine with victory over Coco Gauff"},"content":{"rendered":"

Svitolina ended her 2025 season early, saying she had “not been feeling like myself”. <\/p>\n

She has begun 2026 with a 10-match winning streak – the third-longest of her career. She has dropped just one set in that sequence and triumphed in Auckland shortly before the first major of the year.<\/p>\n

“If I would keep pushing last year, I think I wouldn’t start here. I would be exhausted, and even not sure if I would be injury-free,” Svitolina said.<\/p>\n

“It was important to just step back. I have no regrets to take this time.”<\/p>\n

Svitolina will face a tough task if she is to break further ground. She has lost her past four meetings with her semi-final opponent, world number one Aryna Sabalenka.<\/p>\n

But Svitolina knows what all of her victories mean back home.<\/p>\n

She took a break from the game in 2022 because of, among other things, the emotional strain of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n

Svitolina wrote in her BBC column<\/a> in 2024 that many Ukrainians feel people have lost interest in their ongoing fight to repel the invasion. She speaks about the war frequently in her post-match news conferences and often writes a message to her country on the camera lens after victory.<\/p>\n

“For my country, it’s great. I know that lots of people been watching, especially the matches that I had before,” Svitolina said after her victory over Gauff.<\/p>\n

“It’s very close to my heart to see a lot of support from Ukrainians. It was, I think, one of the toughest winters for Ukrainian people.<\/p>\n

“I feel like [I] bring this light, a little light, to Ukrainian people, to my friends when they are watching my matches.<\/p>\n

“It’s a great feeling for me.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Svitolina ended her 2025 season early, saying she had “not been feeling like myself”. She has begun 2026…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":393360,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-393359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=393359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393359\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/393360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=393359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=393359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=393359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}