Under the radar, Marta Kostyuk learns to enjoy grass at Wimbledon

LONDON -- For the first time in her career, Marta Kostyuk has reached the second week at consecutive Slams. On Saturday, the No. 12 seed booked her place in the Wimbledon fourth round for the first time with a 6-2, 4-6, 6-1 defeat of No. 23 seed Emma Navarro -- her first win over the American in five meetings, including two grass-court losses last year.

But Kostyuk's passage through the Wimbledon draw feels different to her than it did at this stage of Roland Garros. In Paris, she entered the tournament on a 12-match winning streak after titles in Rouen and Madrid; she was considered a contender for the title from the start, and then one of the favorites once she upset four-time champion Iga Swiatek in the fourth round. Kostyuk did go on to make her first Grand Slam semifinal, but lost 6-1, 6-3 to eventual winner Mirra Andreeva.

By contrast, she's made her way through three rounds at SW19 without the same levels of either external attention or internal expectation. Following her gruelling Roland Garros fortnight, Kostyuk dipped out of the spotlight for the three weeks ahead of Wimbledon. She withdrew from Queen's due to an ankle injury, then escaped to the Greek island of Hydra -- notably not one of the country's more glamorous destinations, but a quiet hideaway on which cars are banned and islanders transport goods around by donkey.

"I was looking where to go, and then I had very random meeting with my stylist, and I told her that I want to go to Greece," Kostyuk said. "And she visited a lot of them. She said, 'Oh, you should go to Hydra. You're going to love it.'

"I went to Mykonos once, and I didn't like it at all. Very loud, not what I really needed at that time. I didn't want to go to also all these famous islands, because I feel they are super overpriced and just no aura, you know? So I went there, and it was unbelievable. It was great."

Kostyuk arrived in London rested and recharged, but with no real hopes to go deep at a tournament where she had never progressed beyond the third round, and on a surface where she had never felt comfortable.

"A lot of years that I played here, I played horrendous," she said. "I could not find my tennis on this surface, on any tournament."

Practise week didn't help. Kostyuk lost every set she played, including to Jessica Pegula and Serena Williams.

"I turned to [coach] Sandra [Zaniewska], and I go, 'Can you please tell me, honestly, right now, if you think that grass suits my game?'" Kostyuk recalled. "She said, '100%.'"

From the outside, most fans and pundits would instinctively agree with Zaniewska, with whom Kostyuk has worked for the past three years. The Ukrainian is one of the tour's most athletic movers, and her phenomenal rapid reaction skills have helped garner her some spectacular shot-making over the years on grass. Her willingness to back herself at net and her power when she flattens out her forehand are also natural fits for the surface.

But this year, Kostyuk has frequently talked about becoming a "different player and different person," crediting Zaniewska for helping her reframe her approach to tennis. She's focusing less on the outcomes of any given match, and more on how she feels during it -- but even more importantly, she's zoomed out to a wider perspective on a career that she knows, in the greater scheme of things, is a transient one.

"Winning and losing, it's always there," she said. "You can win everything, and in one month people forget about you. You cannot tie yourself and your self-worth to how you perform on the court, because eventually all this goes away. When your career is finished -- I was thinking about it, that the greatest players of all time, even now, people talk less and less about them. It's fine. It's how life should be. But that's my point -- even when you're a legendary player, everyone still kind of forgets about you. And you have to move on and live your life without all this success and attention and everything that tennis has given you."

With that in mind, Kostyuk has put her practise week woes behind her. She says that she feels "100% better" than she did at the same stage of Roland Garros -- so much so that she's even begun to look forward to next year before this year's campaign is over. Just a handful of days after asking Zaniewska whether she was even capable of playing on grass, Kostyuk has changed her tune.

"I told Sandra in the morning [on Saturday] I'm actually excited to be back next year on this surface," she said. "Because I kind of know what to do. Doesn't mean I'm going to play great next year or whatever, but at least I have this excitement of actually coming back here."

For now, she has the excitement of the second week of Wimbledon, where she'll face qualifier Ashlyn Krueger for a spot in her third Grand Slam quarterfinal.