Elina Svitolina (Ukraine) won her first Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) Tour event singles title since giving birth.
Svitolina defeated No. 56-ranked Anna Blinkova (Russia) 2-0 (6-2 6-3) in the singles final on the final day of the WTA Tour Strasbourg International (€225,480 prize fund) in Strasbourg, France, on Sunday.
It was Svitolina’s 17th tour singles title, a year and nine months after winning the Chicago Open in August 2021 before giving birth. She earned 29,760 euros (about $40 million) for the win.
Svitolina became a mom last October after marrying fellow tennis player Gaelle Montpellier (FRA).
Svitolina returned to the tour in April and entered the tournament ranked 508th in the world in singles.
The 508th-ranked player to win a tour singles title is the lowest-ranked player to do so in 14 years, since Kim Clijsters (BEL) won the 2009 US Open without a world ranking.
There have only been three other times in history that a player ranked lower than 508 has won a WTA Tour singles title: Mirjana Lucic-Baroni (then unranked – Croatia) in 1997, Angelique Wijaya (then ranked 579 – Indonesia) in 2001, and Klijsters in 2009.
With this win, Svitolina improved her singles world ranking to 192.
She also extended her unbeaten streak in clay-court finals to six matches and improved her overall record in tour singles finals to 17-3.안전놀이터
She peaked at No. 3 in the world in 2017, and her best major singles results came at Wimbledon and the US Open quarterfinals in 2019.
Svitolina will enter the French Open, which kicks off in Paris, France, on Aug. 28, with a Protected Ranking (PR).
After defeating a Russian player to win the title, Svitolina said she will use all of her prize money to help children in Ukraine, which is at war with Russia.