Elina Svitolina has confirmed her divorce from Gael Monfils led to the French player ending his tennis career earlier than planned.
Svitolina, the world No 6, announced her split from her husband Monfils on Monday after five years of marriage, with the Ukrainian citing the mental toll of Russia’s ongoing war against her country.
Monfils, 40, had been expected to end his career at November’s Paris Masters, but the former world No 6 appeared on the International Tennis Integrity Agency’s inactive list earlier this month.
That brought his 22-year career to a premature close, with Svitolina, 32, explaining in a further social media post on Tuesday that Monfils made the decision to stop playing following their separation.
“It’s not always possible to explain everything behind such personal and difficult decisions in a single post. And honestly, some things are simply too personal to share publicly,” she wrote on Instagram.
“That was and is my view on announcing the end of our marriage but as some of you saw, Gael’s career ended abruptly after he made the decision to stop based on our situation.
“Unfortunately he had many accusations thrown at him and he didn’t deserve that, so we jointly released a statement.”
Svitolina wrote on Monday that the war in Ukraine had led to “sleepless nights” and “doubts” but said in her second social media post there her divorce from Monfils “was never just about one thing”.
She wrote: “I just want to clarify my previous post a little, because I realised that not everyone, especially my international audience, fully understood what I was trying to say.
“In that post, I shared only one of the reasons that influenced my decision and made me reflect on my life and my future. But the truth is, there’s so much more to it, and it was never just about one thing.
“When you’ve been living through the reality of war for more than 4.5 years, experiencing so many different situations, emotions, and difficult moments, you naturally start seeing life differently.
“Your perspective changes, your values and priorities shift, and you begin to understand what you truly want out of life.
“At some point, I simply realised that I didn’t want to keep living a life where I wasn’t truly happy. And believe me, coming to this decision was anything but easy.”
Monfils played the last match of his career in September with a second-round defeat to Learner Tien at the US Open.
Svitolina and Monfils have a four-year-old daughter, Skai, who Svitolina said they would continue raising together following their split.
“Skai will always come first,” Svitolina said. “Our marriage is ending, but our family is not. We will always be her parents, side by side, at every step of her life.”