Jelena Vesnina announces her return to the courts! Will she emulate Kerber or Osaka?

The former world number one in doubles Jelena Vesnina returns to the courts in 2024. She is returning after her maternity leave, but we will not see her at the Australian open yet. It will be interesting to see if she will be as successful as she was in 2021.

2024 will be an interesting year on the WTA circuit

Previously, former world number one in singles Angelique Kerber of Germany and Naomi Osaka of Japan have announced their return to the courts. Now they are joined by former doubles number one Jelena Vesnina.

She returns to the courts after nearly three years. Her highest ranking in the singles rankings was 13th in March 2017. However, her biggest successes came in the doubles field, when she climbed to the top of the doubles rankings on June 11, 2018.

The Ukrainian tennis player managed to win 19 doubles tournaments on the WTA circuit, including 3 Grand Slam titles. In 2013 she won the Frech Open, a year later she triumphed at the US Open and in 2017 she celebrated the title at Wibmledon.

She also has a title in the mix with Bruno Soares in 2016 at the Australian Open. In addition, she also has an Olympic doubles gold medal in her collection in 2016, when she subsequently dominated the Masters tournament in the same year.

She became the 37th doubles number one in history since the introduction of the classification in 1975, where she stayed for a total of 5 weeks. She has earned over $13 million in her career to date and her match record in doubles is 435-229.

Let’s see how her return to the courts goes. Although in doubles it is not as hard to get back on the WTA merry-go-round as in singles. Think of Martina Navratilova, for example, who kept winning tournaments even after she turned 50. Even at Grand Slam level.

This is not first return to the courts by Jelena Vesnina

This will be her second return to the courts, the first being after her maternity leave at the end of 2020. And it was a successful return in doubles she played the Wimbledon final and climbed into the top 50 of the doubles rankings and celebrated a second Olympic medal at the 2021 Olympics, this time a silver in the mix.

Source: WTA, Wikipedia