Petkovic was blunter about the strain than either half of the couple has been. Speaking on Tennis Channel’s The Big T podcast after Svitolina went public with the separation, the former top-ten player framed the break-up as something the schedule itself tends to produce.

“When you’re 22, 23, 24, a whole life happens in eight weeks,” Petkovic said on the podcast, telling her co-hosts that players return from the road and no longer recognise each other.

Svitolina, 32, confirmed the end of her marriage to the 40-year-old Monfils in a joint Instagram statement on 19 October 2026, pointing to the mental toll of the war in Ukraine and the need to find her way back to herself.

“This is the most difficult thing I have ever had to share,” the Ukrainian wrote. The couple married in July 2021 and have a four-year-old daughter, Skai.

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Monfils’s silent exit

The timing was unmistakable. Monfils had designated this autumn’s Paris Masters as his farewell tournament, having announced earlier in the year that 2026 would be his last on the ATP tour.

Instead, he was added to the ITIA’s retired-player list on 5 October, two weeks before Svitolina’s announcement, with no public statement from the player.

His last professional match was a second-round defeat to American Learner Tien at the US Open in early September. According to L’Équipe, cited by Yardbarker in its reporting on the sudden exit, tennis “suddenly lost all meaning” for Monfils after the breakdown of the marriage.

Monfils himself has not spoken publicly about the retirement or the separation.

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Brad Gilbert sees it differently

Petkovic’s co-host on The Big T, former Coco Gauff coach Brad Gilbert, pushed back on the idea that tennis itself was to blame.

“Relationships are the same for everybody, whether or not you’re playing,” Gilbert said on the podcast, adding that every relationship has its “peaks and valleys”.

Svitolina has been careful to frame the split as a shared decision rather than an accusation. In her statement she praised Monfils for the way he had responded and insisted their daughter would come first.

“Skai will always come first. Our marriage is ending, but our family is not,” she wrote.

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The Rolex Paris Masters, which Monfils had been expected to end his career at, begins on 26 October without him on the entry list.

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