Days before Russian-born Sofia Kenin won the 2020 Australian Open, her father Alex was asked why his native country produces so many great tennis players.
The answer had a dark poetry worthy of Fyodor Dostoyevsky. “The root is very hard,” Kenin replied. “Hard and bitter. What surrounds it is decoration. There is something inside.
That inner steel may help explain why there were five Russians in the fourth round of Wimbledon this year – the most of any nation.
Daniil Medvedev and Andrey Rublev may not have flags next to their names, nor the three letters RUS, following their president’s bloody war in Ukraine. But with both men through to the quarter-finals, along with Belarusian world number 2 Aryna Sabalenka, it’s easy to imagine the All England Club’s worst-case scenario will play out next weekend. It’s the one in which the Princess of Wales ends up presenting a trophy to one of these officially stateless players.
Such a conclusion would represent a nightmarish escalation from last year’s clumsy plot, which saw Her Royal Highness shake hands with Elena Rybakina – a Muscovite who plays under the Kazakh flag.
The desire to avoid these kinds of images – which could potentially be used as a propaganda tool by Vladimir Putin or Alexander Lukashenko – is behind the AELTC’s initial decision to ban Russians and Belarusians from last summer. But the furious response from both professional tours, which took away ranking points at Wimbledon in 2022, left the club with no alternative but to back down.
Going back to 2023, the former Eastern bloc have topped both Wimbledon singles draws to date. Four Czechs reached the middle of the weekend as well as two Poles, two Ukrainians and a Bulgarian. Can we also include Novak Djokovic, given that Serbia is often seen as part of Russia’s sphere of influence? If so, that’s 19 players in the last 32, and probably an 80% chance that both singles champions will come from that group.
There is an origin story behind the success of Slavic tennis. It starts in 1984, the year tennis returned to the Olympics as a demonstration sport. Communist governments saw the direction of travel and funded a few select academies. Five years later, the fall of the Berlin Wall gave new incentives to young athletes: access to international travel, sparking dreams of escaping to the west.
Today, living standards have improved in many former Soviet bloc countries, so much so that Romania is set to overtake Britain by 2040. But areas of deprivation remain. When I asked a top coach to explain the Russian resurgence – which seems all the more stark after last year’s exclusion – he replied “It’s called ‘hungry desire’ in my book. And it’s literal.
“Many Russians have no choice, no welfare system, no money from the federation – and therefore only one path to a better life. When the odds are against you, when your back is against the wall, you do what it takes to succeed. In the UK, the coach is often the driving force trying to push a player forward, while players from Eastern European countries provide their own motivation.
This “Eastern Europe” label covers a variety of territories, each with its own specific culture. Take the Czech Republic, where 0.00016% of women (8 out of 5 million) are among the top 50 players – certainly the highest success rate in the world. The Czechs enjoy a deep tennis tradition, dating back to 1973 Wimbledon champion Jan Kodes and beyond. There are courts – clay and hard – in almost every city and town, and a network of coaches so exceptional that almost every player seems to have flawless technique.
Russia is a very different story. It is not a nation of purists. Just look at the eccentric swing patterns of Medvedev and Maria Sharapova – their two most recent slam champions. Instead, Russia’s deep reserves of tennis talent stem from an almost limitless human capital and the “bitter root” that Alex Kenin spoke of: a willingness to push further than the next person.
Sharapova’s autobiography describes how, during her first tennis lessons in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, she was “the player who continues to work five minutes after everyone has stopped, who continues late into the third set when the wind is blowing and the rain is coming down. It was my gift. Neither the strength nor the speed.
Eventually, Sharapova made her way to a “huge hangar-like facility” in Moscow, where she was picked from a queue by the staring Martina Navratilova and told she had to go to America if she wanted a proper training. Sharapova was to become an international icon – the leggy blonde teenager who won Wimbledon at 17. But that glamorous exterior disguised one of the coldest and toughest personalities in the sport.
Some players – think Roger Federer – look like they’re playing with tennis, even when there’s a million dollars at stake. Born in wealthy Switzerland, Federer was the magician who reveled in creativity, not the grinder looking to fund his next meal.
Russian and Belarusian players take a different approach. When they walk on the court, the atmosphere often becomes serious and intense. At Wimbledon this year, an arduous tournament of long matches and late finishes, they overcame the opposition – and are closing in on that problematic photo opportunity with the Princess of Wales.
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