After more than three hours of exciting tennis, Eva Lys lost her concentration for a moment.

When the moderator asked her the first question in the winning interview on Center Court, her thoughts were obviously somewhere else.

"Sorry, I'm just completely floored," she stammers.

"I've never seen anything like this before."

Pirmin Clossé

sports editor.

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Lys, 20 years old and one of the most hopeful German talents, played a match in the main draw of a WTA tournament for the first time in Stuttgart on Tuesday.

Against the Swiss Viktorija Golubic, after all number 38 in the world, she played impressively cheeky.

She won 5:7, 7:5, 7:5 and thus made it into the round of 16 in the top-class tournament.

It is anything but self-evident that Lys can play so carefree at the moment.

Because the war in Ukraine is very close to her emotionally.

Lys was born in Kyiv.

Her father, who works as a tennis coach in Hamburg, once played for Ukraine in the Davis Cup.

Part of the family still lives in the Ukrainian capital.

Only the grandparents fled in the first weeks of the war.

“The worst thing you can imagine”

They are currently staying with Lys and her family.

Eva Lys is in daily contact with her relatives who are staying in the war zone.

"Unfortunately, the situation is still terrible," she said recently.

And: "What is currently happening in Ukraine is the worst thing you can imagine." She shared a photo of her great-uncle on Instagram.

He is the chief physician of a Kiev clinic and stayed to perform life-saving surgeries.

"I'm proud to have such a courageous family," says Eva Lys.

She became all the more angry when she saw the reactions of some Russian tennis players.

She reported that some of them behaved "disrespectfully."

They made jokes about the war, demonstratively wore their national colors, although this is currently forbidden by the tennis federations.

Lys opposes this with her personal commitment, wanting to clarify the atrocities that the Ukrainian people have to endure.

She also wore an outfit in the national colors of Ukraine at a tournament in Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan.

She also felt “proud” about it, she says.

In Stuttgart, Ly's outfit was kept in neutral colors again.

Nevertheless, her appearance was striking.

After her two victories in the qualification, she played courageously and powerfully at her premiere on the large center court.

At 1.65 meters, the smallest player in the field survived some tricky situations - and is now being rewarded with a duel with the new world number one Iga Swiatek from Poland.

"I can't put into words how excited I am for this match," she said.

Of course that is not the case these days.