Rise and Fall and Fall and Rise

On the long, messy, and still-not-finished journey of Varvara Lepchenko.

PARIS, France — As I scanned the seed list of the women’s qualifying draw as the 2025 French Open got underway Monday here at Roland Garros, one name immediately popped out, the name of someone with a long and complex journey that I hadn’t realized was so close to wending all the way back onto the top flight of her sport.

And since Bounces readers will know I love a long and complex tennis story, I was eager to catch up with her.

Varvara Lepchenko, who turns 39 years old on Wednesday, is ranked 119th and seeded 16th among qualifying hopefuls this week in Paris, putting her in a pole position for a spot in the main draw.

Lepchenko is not only the oldest player entered in the women’s singles field at Roland Garros this year—only 40-year-old wildcard Stan Wawrinka is older than her in the men’s singles field—she’s now the oldest player in the entire WTA Top 500.

“I was just telling a friend of mine, let's see how far I can get and then maybe I'll start a business selling my genes,” Lepchenko said in an interview with Bounces after winning her first qualifying match on Monday. “Maybe my organs are 25, you know?”

Varvara Lepchenko on Monday at Roland Garros.

Lepchenko’s real age on Monday was roughly twice that of 19-year-old Taylah Preston of Australia, whom she beat 6-4, 7-5 in her first qualifying match on Monday out on Court 2 at Roland Garros. Sitting courtside, I was struck by how Lepchenko’s tactical game was unrecognizable from the brutally attritional style that took her to the top, playing a brand of more aggressive tennis that she said was a necessity of age.

“I had to evolve and change some things in my game in order to be able to still compete with all the girls here that are like half my age,” Lepchenko said. “And I think it's working, so I’ll keep going.”

Lepchenko, who hasn’t been a Top 100 player since Summer 2018, is hanging on as an inevitable generational shift occurs on both tours. When 1989-born Victoria Azarenka fell outside of the Top 50 earlier this month¹, it ended a streak of almost exactly 30 years of having at least one 1980s-born player in the WTA Top 50, having started when 1980-born Martina Hingis broke in as a 14-year-old in May 1995.

If Lepchenko can somehow be the one to revive the stay of this unparalleled cohort in top-level women’s tennis, it would be a remarkable last turn in a twisting and rocky road of a career, one that included unexpected gate-crashing into top-flight tennis—stunningly earning a spot on the U.S. team for the 2012 London Olympics—and, infamously, also included two separate positive tests for banned substances.

To read the rest of this 3,000-word story—and all my subsequent on-site coverage from Paris of the 2025 French Open—please get yourself a paid subscription to Bounces! Thanks! -Ben