The 21st century
Ukraine · born Kryvyi Rih, 1986 · Wimbledon girls' champion in 2004 and Birmingham champion in 2008
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2004
Wimbledon girls' singles champion
2008
Birmingham title, the first of her two WTA singles titles
2008
Australian Open doubles champion with her sister Alona
No. 29
Career-high singles ranking, October 2009
No. 9
Career-high doubles ranking, October 2008
Kateryna Bondarenko was born in Kryvyi Rih in 1986 and was introduced to tennis at four by her parents. Her elder sisters Valeria and Alona also played, Alona on the WTA Tour. Kateryna won the Wimbledon girls' singles in 2004, beating Ana Ivanovic in the final.
In 2008 she and Alona, unseeded, won the Australian Open doubles, and in June she won her first WTA singles title on grass at Birmingham. The sisters finished fourth in the doubles at the Beijing Olympics, and she rose to No. 9 in doubles that October. In 2009 she reached the US Open quarter-finals, her best singles result at a major, and a career-high No. 29. She left the tour after the 2012 US Open because she was expecting her first child, returned through qualifying events, and won a second singles title at Tashkent in 2017, nine years after the first. Since 2022 she has played under her married name, Kateryna Volodko.
| Birmingham 2008 | Seeded 12th, beat Yanina Wickmayer 7-6 (9-7), 3-6, 7-6 (7-4) in the final; Wickmayer, 18 and in her first final, hurt her right knee in the second set |
|---|---|
| Wimbledon girls' 2004 | Seeded sixth, beat the third seed Ana Ivanovic 6-4, 6-7 (2-7), 6-2 in the final |
| Wimbledon | Second round in 2008, lost to Svetlana Kuznetsova, and in 2012, lost to Ana Ivanovic |
| Birmingham | ||
|---|---|---|
| 2008 | Women's singles | |
Leading grass titles only: the grass majors, tour-level grass events since 1968 and the leading grass championships before 1968. †single source; ‡ sources disagree. Roll of champions
"I finally I have my own title (but) I didn't expect my first one to come on grass."
The person behind the player.
Melbourne, January 2008
In their 38th tournament as a pair, Kateryna and Alona won their first doubles title together at the Australian Open, beating Victoria Azarenka and Shahar Pe'er 2-6, 6-1, 6-4. They were broken when serving for the match at 5-2 and won on their first match point at 5-4, becoming the first sisters to win a Grand Slam title since Venus and Serena Williams in Melbourne in 2003.
Source: MyKhelBirmingham, June 2008
Her opponent in the final, Yanina Wickmayer, hurt her right knee in the second set and played on to a final-set tie-break. "Even though my knee hurt a lot, I kept on fighting," Wickmayer said. "I'm not a quitter." Bondarenko's prize was $31,000.
Source: UPIBeijing, 2008
At the 2008 Olympics the sisters reached the doubles bronze-medal match and finished fourth. She also played the singles at Beijing and at London in 2012.
Source: OlympediaOff court
Her WTA biography records a cat named Pers and a dog named Princess, and lists chess and reading among her interests. She speaks Ukrainian, Russian and English.
Source: WTAFree membership: player news, the grass court Atlas, the rankings and the grass season calendar.
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