Marta Kostyuk reached her first Wimbledon semifinal on Wednesday, beating Jasmine Paolini 6-3, 6-2 on Centre Court to extend a breakthrough season onto the surface where she had been least expected to make one.
The 12th seed needed just over an hour on her Centre Court debut, was not broken across the match and pulled away late in each set. Paolini, the 2024 runner-up, finished with 26 unforced errors to eight winners and never settled. Kostyuk had won just one of their three previous meetings. She dropped to her knees on the second match point, then marked the win with a pirouette.
A second straight last four. The result gave the 24-year-old Ukrainian a semifinal at consecutive majors. She reached the last four at Roland Garros last month, losing there to Mirra Andreeva, the eventual champion. It also placed her alongside Elina Svitolina as the only Ukrainian women to reach a Wimbledon singles semifinal.
Built on clay, translated to grass. What makes the run notable is where it began. Kostyuk’s climb this year was a clay-court story: titles in Rouen and Madrid, the latter her first at WTA 1000 level, and an unbeaten spring on the surface that carried her to the Paris semifinals. Grass was the question mark. She answered it by leaning on her serve and shortening points rather than grinding from the baseline, and pointed to steadier week-to-week form as the difference. “Just being more consistent from day to day is definitely bringing the results,” she said.
What’s next. Kostyuk will face Linda Noskova on Thursday for a place in Saturday’s final. Noskova, the No. 9 seed, reached her own first Grand Slam semifinal by beating Elise Mertens 6-3, 7-5, and came to Wimbledon having won the Berlin title over Jessica Pegula. The winner will reach a maiden major final.
Both are chasing firsts. For Kostyuk, long defined by talent that took years to convert into deep runs at the majors, back-to-back semifinals on clay and grass suggest the conversion is finally underway.
