INDIAN WELLS, Calif. — Marta Kostyuk, the top-ranked Ukrainian tennis player in the world, drew home-crowd favorite Robin Montgomery for her first match at the BNP Paribas Open Friday.
Listening to the crowd at Stadium 4, the match could have been in Kyiv, not California: they were there for Kostyuk, the world No. 24, from the first ball to the last as she beat Montgomery 6-1, 6-3.
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That was no small thing for a Ukrainian player enduring one of the more tumultuous weeks in her country’s war against Russia, since Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in early 2022.
Last Friday, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine endured a withering attack from U.S. President Donald
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