INDIAN WELLS, Calif. — Dayana Yastremska shouldn’t know so much about the terrible cost of warfare.
The 21-year-old Ukrainian should be able to focus on improving her tennis game, on polishing an aggressive style that has allowed her to rank as high as 21st in the world. She shouldn’t have to be familiar with what to do when civil authorities issue take-cover warnings. She shouldn’t have to understand so well why living near the Black Sea makes her hometown of Odessa a tempting target for the Russian invaders who have attacked her homeland the last two weeks.
Yastremska knows all of these awful things, and more. She lived them before her parents, Oleksander and Marina, arranged for her and 15-year-old sister Ivanna to leave the country to ensure their safety. The sisters went first to Lyon, France, where adrenaline and emotion carried Dayana to the finals of a tournament last week, and then to California, where anxiety and jet lag caught up to Dayana in a loss to Caroline Garcia in the first round of the BNP Paribas Open.
