Pair of 23-year-old Perebiynis with 28-year-old Australian Paul Hanley formed completely by chance already at Wimbledon itself. Playing 'off the cuff', the Ukrainian-Australian duo displayed such skill that step by step they reached the final, where their opponents were the Indian-French pair - Mahesh Bhupathi and Mary Pierce. But in the decisive match Tatyana and Paul lost in two sets to more decorated opponents.
And yet this is an undoubted success. Even if it is in mixed doubles, which is not rated by fans as highly as the singles competition. A Ukrainian woman in the final of the adult Wimbledon - you must admit, that's very good indeed.
Wimbledon started none too convincingly for Ukrainian tennis players, male and female. In the main draw of the singles competition, only three of our female representatives were entered - Alona Bondarenko, Yuliana Fedak and Tatyana Perebiynis. The rest had to battle through the qualifying sieve. Among the men, Sergei Stakhovsky (a Kyiv native who lives and trains in the Czech Republic) passed the first round of qualifying without any problems, defeating American Weiner, then in the second round beat Czech Schnobel, but in the decisive match for the right to reach the main draw he lost to the experienced Finn Ketola.
Five more Ukrainian female representatives started in qualifying - Viktoriya Kuznetsova, Olga Savchuk, Kateryna Bondarenko, Yulia Vakulenko and Yulia Beygelzimer. After the first round matches, the Donetsk natives Savchuk and Beygelzimer dropped out. Vakulenko, Kutuzova and Bondarenko also sailed through the second round without problems, but at the decisive stage of qualifying Kutuzova lost, and only two Ukrainian women made it into the main draw, joining Fedak, Perebiynis and Alona Bondarenko, who had originally made it there.
In the very first match, Perebiynis, Fedak and Kateryna Bondarenko lost, the latter losing to the titled Spanish woman Conchita Martínez, the 1992 Wimbledon champion. Vakulenko played one more match, and Alona Bondarenko hung up her racket in the third round. It was Alona who created one of the first sensations of the tournament by defeating in the first round the strong Frenchwoman of Russian origin - Tatiana Golovin. In the second match, the Kyiv native got past the respected Russian Tatyana Panova, but in the third lost to Frenchwoman Nathalie Dechy (incidentally, Vakulenko lost to another Frenchwoman - Mary Pierce, who, we recall, also did damage to Ukraine in the mixed doubles final).
Ukrainian female tennis players also competed in the doubles event with foreign partners, but Fedak, Alona Bondarenko, Beygelzimer and Perebiynis cannot boast of great success. But in mixed doubles, as it turned out, things went very well.
It remains to add that in the men's singles, the Wimbledon victory was won by Swiss Roger Federer, who defeated American Andy Roddick. Among the women, the strongest was American Venus Williams, who broke the resistance of compatriot Lindsay Davenport. In the men's doubles, Australians Stephen Huss and Wesley Moodie became champions, and in the women's doubles - Zimbabwean Cara Black and South African Liezel Huber. We have already mentioned the mixed doubles. Among the boys, the title was won by Frenchman Jérémy Chardy, and among the girls - Pole Agnieszka Radwanska.