The 21st century
Russia · born Kazan, 1997 · right-handed · Wimbledon doubles champion 2025, four years after losing the final from two championship points up
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2025
Wimbledon doubles champion, with Elise Mertens
2
Wimbledon doubles finals, 2021 and 2025
3-6, 6-2, 6-4
The 2025 final, from a set down against Hsieh Su-wei and Jelena Ostapenko
2
WTA Finals doubles titles with Mertens, 2022 and 2025
9
Career-high singles ranking, reached in 2022
Veronika Kudermetova was born in Kazan on 24 April 1997. Her father, Eduard, was an ice hockey player whose moves between clubs took the family around Russia, and her younger sister Polina also plays on the WTA Tour. She turned professional at 16 after a junior career that peaked at No. 22 in 2013, the year she won the junior Fed Cup with a Russian team led by Daria Kasatkina.
She broke into the singles top 100 in February 2019 and the top 10 in October 2022, reaching a high of No. 9. She won singles titles at Charleston in 2021 and Tokyo in 2023. In doubles she reached the top 10 in January 2022 and has won 14 tour titles, among them the WTA Finals in 2022 with Elise Mertens. She played at the Tokyo Olympics, and since 2022 she has competed as a neutral athlete.
Kudermetova and Mertens split after 2022 and reunited in the spring of 2025. They reached the finals in Madrid and Rome, won Wimbledon in their fifth event back together, and ended the year by winning the WTA Finals again. She missed the whole of the 2026 season, and in September 2026 she announced that she and her husband and coach, Sergei Demekhine, were expecting their first child.
| Wimbledon doubles final 2021 | Unseeded with Elena Vesnina; lost to Hsieh Su-wei and Elise Mertens 3-6, 7-5, 9-7 in 150 minutes, after holding two championship points at 5-4 in the second set |
|---|---|
| Wimbledon doubles final 2025 | Eighth seeds with Mertens; beat the fourth seeds Hsieh and Jelena Ostapenko 3-6, 6-2, 6-4 in 2 hours 23 minutes. She served for the title at 5-4 and finished it with a backhand at close range |
| 's-Hertogenbosch 2022 | Doubles final with Mertens, lost to Ellen Perez and Tamara Zidanšek 6-3, 5-7, 12-10 |
| Wimbledon singles | Lost on Court 15 to the eventual champion two years running: to Markéta Vondroušová in the second round in 2023, and to Barbora Krejčíková 7-6, 6-7, 7-5 in the first round in 2024 |
| Wimbledon | ||
|---|---|---|
| 2025 | Women's doubles | with Elise Mertens |
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 lost that final and it was so painful."
The person behind the player.
Kazan and beyond
Her father, Eduard Kudermetov, played ice hockey, and his transfers between clubs moved the family around Russia. When he retired he joined his daughter's tennis team and negotiated an arrangement that let her train at a good club with competent coaches. She first tried tennis on a summer holiday in the countryside when a friend invited her to play: "I really liked the feeling that the game gave me."
Source: UbitennisVienna, 2012
In 2012 her father explored a switch to the Austrian federation and she moved to Vienna for a couple of months. She did not want to change citizenship, and the family went back to Moscow.
Source: UbitennisAt home
Her WTA biography lists cooking among her interests and names her speciality: roast chicken with potatoes and garlic.
Source: WTACentre Court, 2025
Before the 2025 final she told herself: "Today I said to myself, I really want this." Afterwards she admitted the title had not sunk in: "For the moment, I mean me, right now, [I don't] feel that I'm Wimbledon champion in doubles. Maybe in the evening or tomorrow I will realize it." She added: "I even start to cry a little bit, but then I saw Elise."
Source: WTA; Reuters via The Star2026
After a year away from the tour she posted photographs with her husband, Sergei Demekhine, captioned "Waiting for a miracle", announcing that they were expecting their first child.
Source: WTAFree membership: player news, the grass court Atlas, the rankings and the grass season calendar.
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