Marta Kostyuk turned an ordinary grass record into a Wimbledon semi-final in 2026, carrying the best form of her career from clay onto the surface. She finished the season 11th in the GTC Grass Rankings with a GTC Grass Rating of 115, up from 101.
Grass at a glance
- GTC Grass Rating: 115, 11th in the women’s rankings (22nd before the season)
- Pillars: Lawn Form 84, Arsenal 61, Wimbledon 56, Nerve 60
- Nationality: Ukraine
- Best Wimbledon result: Semi-final (2026)
- Grass titles: None yet
- Plays: Right-handed, two-handed backhand
- Junior: Australian Open girls’ champion, 2017
How Marta plays on grass
Kostyuk plays on the front foot. She stands close to the baseline, takes the ball early and hits flat off both sides, and she is willing to come forward and take balls out of the air. On grass that aggression pays: in her 2026 quarter-final against Jasmine Paolini she broke twice in each set and did not face a break point. Her inside-out forehand is the shot she uses to take control.
The serve is the limit. It is not a weapon of the kind that wins free points on grass, and against the best returners she has to work hard to hold. That is the main reason her Arsenal score is 61 while her Lawn Form, driven by results, is 84. Her Nerve score of 60 reflects a player who competes hard and goes for her shots, but whose serve came under pressure in the most important match of her grass season.
Grass record
Kostyuk’s grass record before 2026 gave little hint of what was coming. At Wimbledon she reached the second round in 2021 and 2022 and the third round in 2023, when she lost to Madison Keys, and in 2024. In 2025 she went out in the first round. She has no grass finals at tour level. As a junior she won the Australian Open girls’ title in 2017 and reached number 2 in the junior rankings.
The 2026 grass season
Kostyuk arrived on grass in the best form of her career. She won the clay titles in Madrid and Rouen and reached the Roland Garros semi-finals, where she lost to Mirra Andreeva, the eventual champion. A right ankle problem then forced her out of Queen’s Club hours before her opening match, and her rating stayed on 101 into Wimbledon.
At Wimbledon she beat Nadia Podoroska, Anna Blinkova, 23rd seed Emma Navarro and qualifier Ashlyn Krueger, then took Paolini apart 6-3, 6-2 in 69 minutes. That win was her 21st in 22 matches. In the semi-final she lost 4-6, 4-6 to Linda Nosková, who went on to win the title. Kostyuk was under pressure on serve throughout and fell behind 0-40 in the tenth game of the first set before the break that settled it. The run lifted her from 101 to 115.
Looking ahead to 2027
For 2027 the question is whether Kostyuk can repeat a level she reached largely on one event. A full grass schedule, with Berlin or Bad Homburg before Wimbledon, would build the record that a Lawn Form score of 84 currently rests on, and the ankle needs to hold up through the transition from clay. The serve is the area with the most room to improve, and the realistic target is another second week at Wimbledon with a quarter-final as the baseline.
