Evgeny ZUKIN: “Lopatskaya was potentially one of the top 10 actors”

Vice President of the Ukrainian Tennis Federation Evgeny Zukin He talked about why not all successful teenagers show up in adult tennis.

– The history of our tennis knows examples where some girls reached a certain age and stopped playing tennis. Unprepared: Dasha Lopatetskaya, Lyuba Kostenko, Marina Chernysheva… Why does this happen when the most difficult stages of career development are already behind?

– Too many factors. Each case is individual. First, nothing can be generalized. This is an individual sport where everything depends only on you. How ready are you to work, what are you willing to do to be better than others? A talent and junior victories are not enough to be a successful professional. Each of the people you list was discovered at some point with some kind of shortcoming that didn’t allow them to move from junior to professional. But, of course, Lopatetskaya was just a shock, potentially among the top 10 players. Again you need to know the details: family, health, wrong treatment, then wrong company. Everything is made up of little things.

I like a phrase on the internet: “Winning tennis is not a common thing. As in any sport. Many people participate, but only one wins. And it must be very special on its own.”

It is a competition of personality, ego, physical abilities, anything that can be found in the human personality. And if one of them has some kind of weak spot, and God forbid, there are two, then there is little chance.