{"id":32392,"date":"2026-06-06T14:16:05","date_gmt":"2026-06-06T14:16:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/06\/marta-kostyuk-vs-mirra-andreeva-two-female-tennis-coaches-and-one-grand-slam-semifinal\/"},"modified":"2026-06-06T14:16:05","modified_gmt":"2026-06-06T14:16:05","slug":"marta-kostyuk-vs-mirra-andreeva-two-female-tennis-coaches-and-one-grand-slam-semifinal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/06\/marta-kostyuk-vs-mirra-andreeva-two-female-tennis-coaches-and-one-grand-slam-semifinal\/","title":{"rendered":"Marta Kostyuk vs. Mirra Andreeva: Two female tennis coaches and one Grand Slam semifinal"},"content":{"rendered":"


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PARIS \u2014 No matter who wins Thursday\u2019s French Open<\/a> semifinal between Marta Kostyuk<\/a> of Ukraine and Mirra Andreeva<\/a> of Russia, something rare is going to happen two days later.<\/p>\n

A tennis player coached by a woman is going to play in a Grand Slam final.<\/p>\n

Kostyuk\u2019s coach, Sandra Zaniewska<\/a>, and Andreeva\u2019s, Conchita Mart\u00ednez<\/a>, are rare figures, with just a handful of female coaches at the highest level of the sport. The job requires being on the road for 20, 30 or perhaps 40 weeks a year. That doesn\u2019t make for a particularly family-friendly work environment, which Zaniewska, and other established coaches, said is biggest obstacle to bringing more women into the ranks.<\/p>\n

\u201cI imagine that if I had a family and kids, I would not be here at all,\u201d Zaniewska, 34, said during an interview in 2024. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t even want to be here. So I understand.\u201d<\/p>\n

The similarities between Zaniewska and Mart\u00ednez mostly end with gender.<\/p>\n

Zaniewska is 20 years younger than Mart\u00ednez. Mart\u00ednez was a top-10 player as a teenager who became a Wimbledon champion; Zaniewska never rose above No. 142 in the world rankings. Mart\u00ednez hails from Spain, one of the world\u2019s established tennis nations; Zaniewska comes from Poland, which until Iga \u015awi\u0105tek, had never produced a Grand Slam champion.<\/p>\n

When Kostyuk hired Zaniewska, her main experience coaching on the WTA Tour was with Aliz\u00e9 Cornet, the French player with a penchant for slaying top-10 stars<\/a> at Grand Slams. Zaniewska spent time as the head of sports performance at the Mouratoglou academy in France, named for Patrick Mouratoglou, the celebrity coach of Serena Williams, Naomi Osaka and more. She established a solid reputation among players who came through there. But that was the bulk of her experience, not as a tour-level coach.<\/p>\n

Mart\u00ednez was never going to do anything outside of tennis. She was part of the fabric of the sport. Before Andreeva, Mart\u00ednez had coached Spain\u2019s great Davis Cup team, which is a men\u2019s team, the rarest of rare things for a woman in tennis, as well as Garbi\u00f1e Muguruza<\/a>, a two-time Grand Slam champion.<\/p>\n

Mart\u00ednez is coaching royalty. She\u2019s just never had much female company on the tour.<\/p>\n

Zaniewska figured she was done with tennis when she retired in 2017. She never wanted to coach. A little under a year later, her friend, Croatia\u2019s Petra Marti\u0107, asked her to help coach her for a couple months. It turned into two years and Zaniewska hasn\u2019t stopped, coaching Cornet and starting to work with Kostyuk, 23, in 2023.<\/p>\n

Zaniewska has a Substack, where she posts her essays on tennis, coaching, life, philosophy \u2014 and Kostyuk.<\/p>\n

A recent one was called \u201cThe Useful Lie:\u00a0On belief, memory, and the strange relationship athletes have with reality.\u201d Another was called \u201cThe Unseen Court: The Illusion of Suddenly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mart\u00ednez speaks sparingly with the public, not wanting to share too much information about Andreeva with rivals. In interviews, there are plenty of smiles and laughs that come with the same unsaid message: Good question, but I\u2019m not going to answer it<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Kostyuk had been coached by her mother and needed a big-sister-like figure to take on the role, someone who accepts all of her unconditionally and without the baggage of familial ties and mother-daughter relationships.<\/p>\n

Zaniewska asked a lot of questions. Why tennis? What does she want to achieve? What are her dreams? Why does she think she can achieve them? What was she looking for in a coach? What does she feel she needs from a coach? Why had some of the previous partnerships with coaches not worked out?<\/p>\n

\u201cJust really to get as broad of a picture as possible,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Then came a trial week in Monaco. Kostyuk was a mess, crying on the court. Zaniewska didn\u2019t care. She wanted Kostyuk to let it out.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe let me be who I am. I was feeling very, very comfortable,\u201d Kostyuk said in a news conference after her quarterfinal win over Elina Svitolina.\u00a0 \u201cI think, probably for the first time in my life that I felt comfortable with the coach. Like, truly as a human, you know? Not as a tennis player.\u201d<\/p>\n

The losses piled up over the next few months. Would they dump each other because there was so little winning? Both thought the other one might drop them. Kostyuk, though, knew she had found her person. \u201cIt\u2019s just more relatable,\u201d she said of Zaniewska during an interview in 2024. Two years on, before her first major semifinal, she remembered thinking, \u201cI know it\u2019s going to work out, because we are great together.\u201d<\/p>\n

Andreeva had been coached by mostly male professionals through her childhood years, as her ever-present tennis mom, Raisa, moved her and her sister from Siberia to Sochi to France as she tried to raise champions. She was wildly talented but young in every way, as 16-year-olds are.<\/p>\n

\n
\"Conchita<\/p>\n
\n

\n Conchita Mart\u00ednez and Mirra Andreeva\u2019s partnership has accelerated her rise up the tennis ladder. (Robert Prange \/ Getty Images)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Her management team connected her with Mart\u00ednez in early 2024. She was a little wary. She knew what teenagers could be like. She wasn\u2019t sure how hard Andreeva wanted to work or if she would listen to her.<\/p>\n

Then she spent a little time on the practice court. Andreeva worked hard and could be harder on herself than Mart\u00ednez was on her. Mart\u00ednez preached patience. Build an arsenal of skills one by one.<\/p>\n

Andreeva wanted everything all at once. A student of tennis history,\u00a0 she pulled up videos on the internet of Mart\u00ednez\u2019s old matches. She studied them, and when Mart\u00ednez spoke, she listened, mostly, then put her own Gen-Z spin on Gen-X wisdom, like Anne Hathaway taking princess lessons from Julie Andrews in \u201cThe Princess Diaries.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zaniewska and Martinez\u2019s approach to getting the best out of a common trait in their players also diverges. Zaniewska saw Kostyuk\u2019s emotional swings on the court and didn\u2019t mind them.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always tell her that I doubt that she\u2019s going to be a player that\u2019s not going to express anything, you know,\u201d she said. \u201cIf you\u2019re going to stop expressing your frustration, then you\u2019re also going to stop to stop encouraging yourself. You\u2019re just going to go entirely flat.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s how she is, it\u2019s who she is as a person, and that can be an incredible quality if used in the right way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mart\u00ednez saw Andreeva\u2019s emotional outbursts on court and preached control. Petulance helps no one. It leads to poor decisions. Mart\u00ednez, a teen phenom herself, has experience of the specific pressures that come with the status. With the benefit of experience, she has arrived at a simple solution: Guiding Andreeva to stop acting like a brat when the emotions are going the wrong way<\/p>\n

\u201cI think what is making her so successful, at the moment, is she\u2019s not making a lot of stupid decisions on the court.\u201d she said during an interview in March last year, as Andreeva made her title run to the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells. \u201cHaving the good choices, waiting for the right ball to do something, really holding her ground and, being able to compete.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the good choices where to hit and why you hit there, you know, I want her to really be aware why, and she\u2019s getting it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mart\u00ednez nor Zaniewska says too much during a tennis match. Zaniewska respond to Kostyuk\u2019s questions but generally does not insert herself into the match.<\/p>\n

Mart\u00ednez watches stoically, especially when Andreeva goes on one of her tirades. And when Andreeva hits one of her crazily creative shots and turns to Mart\u00ednez for praise, she is met with a smile, and maybe some clapping. Then it\u2019s on to the next point.<\/p>\n

Mart\u00ednez is right for Andreeeva. Zaniewska is right for Kostyuk. And now they have a Grand Slam semifinal to play.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PARIS \u2014 No matter who wins Thursday\u2019s French Open semifinal between Marta Kostyuk of Ukraine and Mirra Andreeva of Russia,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32393,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_animmysite_disable_animation":false,"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/athletic\/uploads\/wp\/2026\/06\/04051658\/Tennis-Coach-Women-Kostyuk-scaled.jpg?width=1200&height=630&fit=cover","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[212],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32392\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}