The 21st century
Ukraine · born Dnipro, 1992 · right-handed · Wimbledon mixed doubles champion 2023 with Mate Pavić, the first Ukrainian to win a Wimbledon title
All playersBack to the rankings
1st
Ukrainian to win a Wimbledon title, the 2023 mixed with Mate Pavić
4
Grass tour titles: Nottingham 2021, Birmingham 2022, Wimbledon 2023, Eastbourne 2024
1
Match point saved on the way to the 2023 Wimbledon mixed title
2
Major titles: Wimbledon mixed 2023, US Open women's doubles 2024
No. 3
Career-high doubles ranking, September 2024
Lyudmyla Kichenok was born in Dnipro, then Dnipropetrovsk, on 20 July 1992, the twin sister of Nadiia Kichenok. The twins started playing at seven, on a family holiday in Crimea, and grew up as a doubles pair. She reached No. 156 in singles in 2014 and beat the reigning US Open champion Flavia Pennetta in Tianjin in 2015, but her career was made in doubles. With Nadiia she won the Shenzhen title in 2015, the second pair of twins to win a WTA doubles title.
Her first grass title came at Nottingham in 2021 with Makoto Ninomiya. From 2022 her regular partner was the Latvian Jeļena Ostapenko: they won Birmingham and Cincinnati in 2022, reached the Wimbledon semi-finals that year, and in 2024 won Brisbane, Eastbourne and the US Open, where Kichenok postponed her wedding to play the semi-final. In between, in 2023, she won the Wimbledon mixed doubles with Mate Pavić of Croatia, the first Wimbledon title for a Ukrainian player.
She reached No. 3 in the doubles rankings in September 2024 and has played three Olympic Games with her sister, reaching the quarter-finals in Tokyo and Paris.
| Wimbledon mixed 2023 | Seeded seventh with Mate Pavić. Second round: beat Nikola Mektić and Bernarda Pera 6-7 (5-7), 7-6 (7-4), 7-6 (11-9), after saving a match point at 8-9 in the deciding tiebreak. Final: beat Joran Vliegen and Xu Yifan 6-4, 6-7 (7-9), 6-3 on Centre Court in 2 hours 7 minutes; neither champion lost serve |
|---|---|
| Wimbledon doubles | 2014: with her sister Nadiia held five match points in the second-set tiebreak against Sara Errani and Roberta Vinci in the second round and lost 7-5, 6-7 (10-12), 1-6; Errani and Vinci went on to win the title. 2022: semi-final with Jeļena Ostapenko, lost to Barbora Krejčíková and Kateřina Siniaková 6-2, 6-2. 2024: quarter-final with Ostapenko |
| Grass tour finals | Nottingham 2021 with Makoto Ninomiya: beat Caroline Dolehide and Storm Sanders 6-4, 6-7 (3-7), 10-8. Birmingham 2022 with Ostapenko: won the final by walkover over Elise Mertens and Zhang Shuai. Eastbourne 2022: lost the final by walkover. Eastbourne 2024 with Ostapenko: beat Gabriela Dabrowski and Erin Routliffe 5-7, 7-6 (2), 10-8, after beating Krejčíková and Siniaková on the way |
| Wimbledon | ||
|---|---|---|
| 2023 | Mixed doubles | with Mate Pavić |
| Nottingham | ||
| 2021 | Women's doubles | with Makoto Ninomiya |
| Birmingham | ||
| 2022 | Women's doubles | with Jeļena Ostapenko |
| Eastbourne | ||
| 2024 | Women's doubles | with Jeļena Ostapenko |
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 really hope this helps the people of Ukraine because they are fighting for their freedom"
The person behind the player.
Crimea, 1999
She and her twin sister Nadiia started playing at the age of seven while on holiday in Crimea. Their father, Victor, was a businessman and their mother, Elena, a housewife. The twins went on to win four WTA titles together and to play three Olympic Games side by side.
Source: WTA player biographyWimbledon 2014
In their second-round match at Wimbledon in 2014 the Kichenok twins won the first set against Sara Errani and Roberta Vinci and held five match points in the second-set tiebreak. They lost it 12-10 and the match 6-1 in the third, and the Italians went on to win the title.
Source: Wimbledon Compendium 2025Wimbledon 2023
Asked how she and Pavić had won, she said: "We both are trying to play aggressive. On grass it especially works really well. That's the key." It was her first Grand Slam final as well as her first title, and she said: "It feels amazing to be Wimbledon champion in mixed doubles."
Source: WTAWimbledon 2023
In the presentation ceremony on Centre Court she dedicated the title to Ukrainians, saying she hoped it would help people fighting for their freedom, and the crowd rose to give her a standing ovation.
Source: Tennis MajorsNew York, 2024
She and her fiancé Stas, who coaches Ostapenko, had booked a wedding appointment in New York for the second Wednesday of the 2024 US Open, the day of her doubles semi-final. They postponed it, and she and Ostapenko went on to win the title. "But we're going to do it somewhere, somehow," she said.
Source: WTAFree membership: player news, the grass court Atlas, the rankings and the grass season calendar.
Join freePage updated 4 November 2026. Spotted an error? Send a correction.
_(48199182982).jpg){kind=link}