Jelena Ostapenko was born on 8 June 1997 in Riga, Latvia, to former Ukrainian footballer Jevgenijs, Latvian-Russian tennis coach, and former player Jelena. She also has a half-brother named Maksim.
Ostapenko was a very accomplished junior player. The highlight of her junior career was winning the Wimbledon title by overcoming Kristina Schmiedlova in the final. She reached a high of No. 2 in the junior rankings. The Latvian began her career on the WTA Tour in the second half of 2015.
She swiftly proved her ability with a run to the final in Quebec in September, but she finished as the runner-up to Annika Beck. It was at the WTA 1000 event in Qatar the following year that Ostapenko became known to the wider tennis community. She had a run to the final that included a victory against former Wimbledon champion Petra Kvitova but missed out on the title after a narrow loss to Carla Suarez Navarro.
Ostapenko’s form then dipped considerably for a year. She returned to form by finishing as the runner-up on the clay courts of Charleston in April 2017. But no one in the tennis world predicted what was to come at that year’s Roland Garros. Victories against Louisa Chirico, Monica Puig, and Lesia Tsurenko took Ostapenko into a maiden Grand Slam fourth round.
She then defeated the former US Open champion Sam Stosur to reach the quarterfinal. The Latvian recovered from a set down to beat Caroline Wozniacki (who won the Australian Open the following year) and then completed a stunning run to the final by prevailing against Timea Bacsinszky in three sets.
Simona Halep stood between her and the title at the 2017 French Open. After one of the most dramatic French Open women’s finals ever, Ostapenko won the title with a 4-6 6-4 6-3 triumph. It made her the first unseeded player to win the French Open since 1933 and the first Latvian to win a Grand Slam.
Recapturing those heights was always going to be difficult for Ostapenko. She did reach another WTA 1000 final in Miami and made the 2018 Wimbledon semifinal. However, Ostapenko then did not make another Grand Slam quarterfinal for over four years.
That run ended at the 2023 Australian Open, and another Grand Slam quarterfinal followed in the same season at the US Open. 2023 was a positive year for Ostapenko. Solid results saw her end the year at No. 13, her best year-end ranking since 2017.
She then started the 2024 season very positively by winning a seventh WTA title in Adelaide, which saw her enter the Top 10 for the first time in nearly six years. Ostapenko is also known for her fiery and unique personality on-court, often struggling to contain her emotions when attempting to implement her very aggressive style of tennis.
