This arrangement put a strain on the tournament locker rooms and other shared spaces. Ukrainian players like Yastremska and Lesia Tsurenko say they feel uncomfortable around Russian and Belarusian players.
“We know how popular he is in their country,” Tsurenko said of Putin earlier this year.
Then, in April, the British Parliament advised the All England Club, which hosts Wimbledon, and the Lawn Tennis Association, which oversees several other tournaments in the UK, to allow Russian and Belarusian players to participate in a grass-court event in June. instructed to ban participation in July. Clubs and associations followed suit, withholding ranking points from Wimbledon on the tennis tour and threatening penalties against other tournaments.
Russian players expressed their dissatisfaction. The tournament went without them, including Medvedev, who is now a world-ranked men’s singles player.
Then, in an even more complicated twist, Russian-born and raised Elena Rybakina won the women’s singles championship at Wimbledon as Russia stepped up its siege in eastern Ukraine. Rybakina first represented Kazakhstan four years before the Soviet Union offered to fund its development. Like all players whose families still live in Russia and Belarus, Ryvakina was careful to avoid discussing the war.
Other Russian and Belarusian top stars, including Rublev, Kasatkina and Azarenka, qualified for tournaments in the United States last week.
As in the spring, their matches went largely without incident, with the players limiting their post-match comments mostly to tennis and avoiding questions about the victims of the invasion or their feelings for their country’s leaders.
