UKRAINIAN PRO TENNIS player Dayana Yastremska wrapped her arms around her father, tears running down her cheeks. She had to let go. A small boat was waiting to whisk her and her 15-year-old sister, Ivanna, away. Her father had driven them from their home in Odessa, Ukraine, some 150 miles south to Izmail, a smaller city in the Danube Delta. Throughout their early-morning drive on Friday, a day after Russia invaded Ukraine, she saw the devastation the war already had wreaked. Smoke, buildings turned to rubble, an eerie quiet.
Her father parked the car in Izmail, and the family walked the last five minutes to the harbor, to the boat that would take Dayana and her sister to Romania. Their father kissed her forehead as she held onto two suitcases, her entire life packed haphazardly in them.
“I don’t know how this war will end, but you must take care of each other, and strive for your dreams, build your new life and always be together,” her father said to her. “Don’t worry about us, everything will be fine.”
In matching pink sweatpants, the sisters walked away from their parents, rolling their suitcases to the boat. When the boat’s engine whirred, they waved vigorously at their parents, at the country they were forced to leave behind, at everything they knew to be home.
“Is this a movie or is this real?” Yastremska thought over and over again.
A few days earlier, she laughed with her family during dinner and worried about her practice the next day. Today, she didn’t know if she would ever see her father again. Today, she didn’t know if she would have a country to return to.
Now, Yastremska is safe in Lyon, France, and, despite the horror of the past few days, she plans to compete in the Lyon Open starting Monday. The world No. 121, who was ranked as high as No. 21 in January 2020, has won three WTA titles in her career.
Nine Ukrainian women are among the top 300 players on the WTA Tour; three Ukrainian men are ranked in the ATP Tour’s top 300.
World No. 15, Elina Svitolina,…
Source : espn
