 "US Open bride-to-be Lyudmyla Kichenok postpones wedding, wins Grand Slam title")
Lyudmyla Kichenok was due to marry boyfriend Stas Khmarsky, who is also fellow pro Jelena Ostapenko’s coach. A run to the US Open women’s doubles final forced a change of plans.
Kichenok and Ostapenko won the title on Friday for their first major as a team, beating Kristina Mladenovic and Zhang Shuai 6-4, 6-3.
On Wednesday, she had been planning to get married.
Kichenok said she and Khmarskiy were engaged for over a year. When they arrived for the US Open, they made plans for the wedding to be in New York.
Scheduling your wedding in the middle of a Grand Slam when you’re that good of a tennis player?
— US Open Tennis (@usopen) September 6, 2024
Unforced error, Lyudmyla Kichenok 😅💍 pic.twitter.com/rnRDx8ut3s
“We were figuring out all the things, where we can do that. And, yeah, he found a spot here and he just booked an appointment for Wednesday,” Kichenok said. “He told me that. I was like, ‘OK, yeah, let’s go.’”
Instead, Kichenok and Ostapenko occupied a tennis court with Khmarskiy watching on the semi-final on Wednesday.
“I think it’s a good excuse to postpone it a bit,” Ostapenko said during the trophy ceremony.
Kichenok and Ostapenko, the seventh seeds, began the season with a loss in the Australian Open final. They were too good in Flushing Meadows, where they didn’t drop a set and won $750,000.
It was the fifth title together overall for Ostapenko, a Latvian who won the 2017 French Open in singles, and Kichenok, who dedicated the victory to her home country of Ukraine.
“They are fighting really hard for our freedom right now and I just hope I can give them some encouragement,” Kichenok said, “and my heart is with them.”
As for her wedding, Kichenok only knew that it would now be “somewhere, somehow.”
“No plan yet,” she said. “Maybe Las Vegas or in Europe somewhere.”
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