Eva Lys’ tennis rise up the WTA Tour is built on a ‘less is more’ approach. She explains why

At the back end of the tennis season, when players are retiring mid-match and pulling out of tournaments with alarming regularity — and surprise results get less surprising — a player who has had to overcome physical challenges to thrive on the WTA Tour is having the best week of her career.

For Eva Lys, her most recent victory brought two milestones. The 23-year-old German cried happy tears after beating McCartney Kessler of the U.S. at the China Open on Monday to reach her maiden quarterfinal at a WTA 1000 event, the rung below the Grand Slams. Lys cracked the world’s top 50 for the first time in the process.

She did so after winning three straight three-setters, including against former Wimbledon champion Elena Rybakina, and her reward is a last-eight meeting Thursday with America’s world No. 3, Coco Gauff. Even if she loses, Lys is set to be ranked No. 45 next week.

For a player who has to manage her body and quell her competitive brain more than most players in the sport, the achievement is all the more special. In 2020, Lys was diagnosed with spondyloarthritis, a rheumatic autoimmune disease that causes stiffness and pain in joints near the spine and in the lower limbs.

“It’s super weird,” Lys said in a recent interview of having to completely rewire her brain and accept that her body won’t let her train like it’s assumed every athlete must. “Especially because with my family growing up, (the message was) hard work pays off. And the harder you work, the better you get. This is the usual thinking.”

Lys, who was born in Kyiv and moved to Hamburg, Germany with her family when she was two, is one of the breakthrough players of the year. She entered the top 100 for the first time in January, after becoming the first player in the Open Era to reach the Australian Open fourth round as a lucky loser. She has made steady progress ever since, helped by understanding her body a bit more and gaining a clearer sense of how hard she can push herself.

“We just had to adjust and for me, actually, less is better sometimes,” Lys said. “I love to grind hard. I love to go over the edge sometimes. But sometimes I can’t do that because then I wouldn’t be able to play the next week. So, yeah, it’s a weird feeling to know the less, the better. It’s something we had to learn, not only myself but also my team.

“It definitely took a while. The first years were really, really tough, like up until last year. But, yeah, I changed a lot. I adjusted small details with my team.”

Those details were around things like recovery, load and diet. “I can do everything all the other tennis players can do, I just sometimes need to take a little bit time from my body and recover a little longer, maybe,” Lys said. She came to realise that if she trained like her rivals, that could knock her out for a few days, even weeks.

Lys’ game is fun to watch — she likes to take the ball early and dominate from the baseline — but there’s far more to her than what goes on on the court. Fluent in German, Ukrainian, Russian, and English, and learning Spanish, Lys is also outspoken on issues that matter to her.

She has frequently spoken out about the fact there is still not equal prize money across the board for men’s and women’s players. At last month’s Cincinnati Open, Carlos Alcaraz received $1,124,380 for winning the title, compared to Iga Świątek’s $752,275. The WTA Tour has pledged that equal prize money will feature across combined events by 2027.

“The equality part is still a big thing,” Lys said. “Compared to the ATP we’re still very far away — so I’m definitely trying my best to talk about these topics. I think one of the biggest topics next to it is also the whole social media hate we get. It’s important to speak out on it and, for me, staying quiet is not a solution if you wanna change things.”

Lys is also a prolific content creator, her videos on sites like TikTok offering a window into the life of a professional tennis player. Her creativity and authenticity has made her a magnet for big brands, leading to deals with Porsche, La Roche-Posay and Asics. She has established close friendships with players like Marta Kostyuk of Ukraine, as well as becoming a fan favorite, including in China this week, where she has had a lot of crowd backing.

“I love videos and I love taking photos and just seeing everything from a different perspective,” Lys said. “I love getting creative, and also about showing different perspectives and showing people tennis from a different side.

“I feel like there’s not many people showing the insights of a tennis player’s life with maybe a different spin. So I do enjoy that a lot and I like fashion. I like taking hobbies to a different level. And I try not to focus too much on tennis when I’m not on court because I tend to go a little crazy.”

Lys’ social media output manages to convey the grind of life on the tour, with plenty of lighthearted moments as well. Last week, she played along with the idea that her water bottle at a change of ends had been spiked with vodka; when she met Świątek at the Canadian Open, having won just one game against the world No. 2 at the Australian Open, she celebrated winning two with self-effacing abandon.

zero privacy 🙄 everyone has their own methods to loosen up … 😂 https://t.co/DXihSSS0kr

— Eva Lys (@evalys_) September 26, 2025

Lys would love for tennis as a whole to be better at showing off the personalities of the players involved.

“One thing that is maybe missing a little bit is that we have so many nice personalities on tour that maybe are not shown as much,” she said.

“You just see the player on court but they’re a totally different person off court. And especially with my friends, I just like to put out and show people that we actually have cool tennis players but also cool people next to (off) the court.”

After beating Kessler, Lys was asked in her on-court interview about the prospect of playing Gauff. “I mean, this is the reason I play tennis,” she replied. “I’m happy to have the best opponents there are and happy to see where my game stands. I’m really excited for the match.”

Lys can’t know when she’ll next need to listen to her body’s warnings and take a step back, but for now, the ‘less is more’ mantra appears to be working.

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

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