After injury setbacks, Alina Korneeva is putting the pieces back together

In her spare time, Alina Korneeva enjoys building things.

Only 19, she has tried her hand at pottery and painting, but her medium of choice is intricate miniature wooden models -- she recently completed a tiny cafeteria, down to the tables and chairs -- as well as mosaics, painstakingly assembling small colored tiles into a larger image. Her favorite creation so far is a portrait of her parents, Aleksandr and Irina.

This week at the National Bank Open in Toronto, Korneeva is putting together something just as impressive. On Wednesday, the qualifier upset No. 23 seed Emma Navarro 6-2, 6-2 for her first Top 30 win and a place in the third round of a WTA 1000 event for the first time.

Indeed, Korneeva has been on the rise all season. She opened 2026 at No. 210, broke into the Top 100 in June and is ranked No. 89 this week after compiling a 35-13 record. Along the way, she captured her first WTA 125 title in Oeiras in February -- her fifth career trophy in Portugal, a country she calls her "lucky charm" -- qualified for both Roland Garros and Wimbledon and reached her second tour-level semifinal in Athens last month.

"Of course it's giving me confidence," Korneeva said after her career-best win over Navarro. "One year ago, I was playing against players outside the Top 100. Everyone is difficult, but it's different when you play against players outside the Top 100, and then you can beat [someone in] the Top 30, for example.

"But I'm just always thinking that I want to take care of this confidence, to don't lose it. Because it's very easy to lose the confidence and it's also very easy to gain it."

In some ways, though, Korneeva's 2026 rise is less a breakthrough than a return to the trajectory many expected. She finished 2023 as the junior No. 1 after becoming the first player in 23 years to win the Australian Open and Roland Garros girls' titles in the same season. The Australian Open final was especially memorable: a 6-7(2), 6-4, 7-5 victory over Mirra Andreeva that lasted 3 hours and 18 minutes.

Korneeva and Andreeva's careers quickly took different paths. By the end of 2023, Andreeva was already inside the Top 50. Korneeva appeared to be on a similar trajectory after qualifying for the 2024 Australian Open, reaching the second round and climbing to a career-high No. 128 the following month.

Instead, injuries brought her progress to a halt. A wrist injury required surgery and sidelined her for seven months. An adductor injury followed, forcing her to miss most of the first half of 2025.

"I expected that this was going to be easy, and I also expected for myself to come back pretty fast," Korneeva said.

Instead, she said, recovering from wrist surgery took nine months. By the time she returned, she had lost "the rhythm of the game, the rhythm of competition and rhythm of fighting."

She eventually found it again, only to be forced off tour for another six months.

"It was tough to accept because I already went through nine months doing nothing -- and now another six months doing nothing," Korneeva said. "Every week they were telling me, 'We need more time, we need more time.'"

It was during those long months away from the tour that Korneeva discovered her love of crafts. Building miniature models and mosaics kept her hands and mind occupied while she tried to shut tennis out completely.

"I didn't want to see other players -- not even winning, just playing," she said. "Everyone playing, and me doing nothing."

Acceptance, she said, did not come easily. But it became the foundation of her comeback, reinforced daily by her team at the Rafa Nadal Academy in Mallorca.

"The most advice from them was to accept the challenges," Korneeva said. "To accept that I'm still young. They were repeating to me every day, 'You're still young. You're just 17.'"

Eventually, that acceptance extended to the sport itself.

"At some point I realized that maybe it's good also to watch tennis," Korneeva said. "To see how everyone is growing and what the tennis now, to already be prepared before I'm going out on court."

Now, studying opponents has become part of the routine. Korneeva and coach Anabel Medina Garrigues will do plenty of that before Thursday's third-round meeting with No. 13 seed Iva Jovic. The two fellow 2007-born prospects have never faced each other, despite growing up in the same generation.

"We will try to prepare as much as better as we can the match to see her last matches," Korneeva said. "And to analyze as much as we can. I'm very excited that now there's so many young and good players on the tour. ... It's very interesting to play against all of them."