Elina Svitolina acknowledges that she recognizes the increased expectations on her following a strong start to her comeback after giving birth. However, she emphasizes that her main focus remains on working hard and maintaining her health.
Svitolina, who took a break from tennis for 13 months and was once ranked as low as No. 1344 in the world, achieved a significant feat by winning a WTA 250 title in Strasbourg less than two months after returning to the sport. She continued to impress by reaching the quarterfinals of the French Open and the semifinals of Wimbledon.
At the beginning of this season, Svitolina also achieved notable results, finishing as the runner-up in Auckland and reaching the round-of-16 at the Australian Open. Unfortunately, a back injury forced her to retire from her match against Linda Noskova. However, her performance at the Australian Open allowed her to return to the top-20 rankings for the first time since April 2022.
After taking some time off to address her back injury, Svitolina is making her comeback at a WTA 1000 tournament in Dubai.
“I would say that now there are higher expectations from me because people have seen that I can compete and win titles against top players,” Svitolina stated in Dubai. “However, my main focus is to put in the work every day and during every practice session. My priority is to maintain my health because when I am healthy, I can perform well and go far in tournaments. That is my main focus at the moment.”
In the first round of the Dubai tournament, Svitolina will face fellow Ukrainian Anhelina Kalinina. This will be their second meeting, with their first encounter taking place at an ITF event in Donetsk in 2013, where Svitolina emerged as the victor.
In the past, Svitolina has experienced great success in Dubai, winning consecutive titles at the tournament in 2017 and 2018.
According to the Source tennisworldusa.org