French Open Day 10 - Can Kostyuk win it all for Ukraine?

**Catherine** (0:10)
Hello, and welcome to The Tennis Podcast on day 10 of The Friendship and the first day of quarterfinal action, and the first day of rain here at Roland Garros. The heavens have been intermittently and very dramatically opening here in Paris, which may or may not be a pathetic fallacy, because Matt Roberts' current mood is low. Send hugs through the ether to Matt Roberts, folks.

**Matt Roberts** (0:38)
Yeah, the news I've been dreading arrived about half an hour ago.

**David** (0:43)
What news was that, Matt?

**Matt Roberts** (0:45)
One of the most important men in my life has left me, Marco Silva, Fulham manager. We've had five great years.

**David** (0:54)
He's gone to sunny acclimates.

**Matt Roberts** (0:56)
Yes, he's gone to Portugal. Who can blame him?

**Catherine** (0:59)
He couldn't unmute the Marco Silva farewell video that the Fulham official account put out because he didn't feel emotionally prepared for the sad music that they might have put with it.

**Matt Roberts** (1:12)
I'll watch that in a few days.

**David** (1:15)
When he's stronger.

**Catherine** (1:17)
We are coming to you here in part one, folks. It's around about 6pm, 6.15.
Night session is still to come. Laura Siegmund is actually doing her best to delay the night session. She and Edouard Roger-Vassalin have been drafted in to fill intentionally blank. Or else we would be recording this in our usual lovely spot on Châtier. But no, we are coming to you in part one from the area, the place where David loiteres with his microphone on Media Day, which feels quite a long time ago now, doesn't it?

**Matt Roberts** (1:50)
Remember the boycott?

**Catherine** (1:51)
We've lived a lot of lives since then. And Media Day was a time when some of us, I don't think there's any need to name names, didn't have Marta Kostyuk in our mix for this title. That is how long ago it feels, because I'm not sure anybody is more in my mix for this title right now than Marta Kostyuk.

**David** (2:13)
Yeah, she is delivering on all the promise, really, of the last few months, because so interesting, isn't it, that she came on the scene as a 15-year-old, which always makes me anxious when somebody's that young playing professional sports. And I mean, I haven't talked to her in depth about it, but I'm not sure that was the best thing for her, really. Her development, and it's taken a while, it's taken ups and downs. And the last couple of years, we've seen clear strides, but then this year, I go back all the way to that tournament in Brisbane, where she was just beating top players like Jessica Bagula, and just knocking them off the court.
She had the injury problem at the Australian Open, and then came back out after a period of time out and won that Madrid title. And it was just always going to be so fascinating to see whether she could bring that in here. And it has taken a while for her to reach her peak form, I think, and get comfortable on the court. And she seems to have got into a really good mindset of sort of not getting involved in the conversation and really doing that compartmentalization of next match at a time, next point at a time. But today, against her compatriot, the favorite for the match, you would think, even despite Kostyuk's form against Fiontek in the previous round, Svitolina is just so bankable these days that I think a lot of people would have had Svitolina as the favorite for the match. But Kostyuk showed a gear today that she has that is right at the top of the game. I think it's up there with Sabalenka, Rybakina, Chvontek, when she was at her best. You know, it's get in there. If it's not there, it's get in there.
Particularly, Catherine, that finished, the last few games were a joke from Kostyuk.

**Catherine** (4:11)
It was a surge, TM, those last few games from Kostyuk at 3 o'clock in the morning last night when we just got back to the flat and we were waiting for our pizza to be delivered. It's that time of the tournament, folks.
Matt does what he always does, last order of the day. He requests a prediction for us for the newsletter for the following day. And I was wrestling between Kostyuk in two and Svitolina in three. I just thought, I thought Kostyuk had the level to win this match. But I thought once Svitolina gets her teeth into something, you know, we talked about her slow starts, her relatively slow starts a couple of days ago, but I just thought once she got her teeth into this match, she would be a dog with a bone and be impossible to tear away from it. But I didn't know that Kostyuk had a surge TM like this. I mean, it was breathtaking tennis when she most needed it.