Jelena Ostapenko has allowed fans to catch a glimpse of a side of her life seldom seen on a tennis broadcast. The Latvian star impressed her fans with her ballroom dance skills, gliding across the floor with exquisite footwork and grace in a recent video. The clip has gone viral since then, and not many people know that Ostapenko has been doing this as long as she has been playing tennis. 

“One of my favorite hobbies ballroom dancing,” Ostapenko wrote in the caption of her TikTok video.

As a child, Ostapenko had serious hopes in both ballroom and tennis, and she participated in the National Ballroom Dance Championships of Latvia. Though she discovered tennis at the same time as dancing, at the age of five, she began to focus more on her professional tennis career around age 12 and formally turned pro in 2012, she could not leave the dance floor behind entirely. She resumed dancing in 2014 and has pursued her childhood dream whenever her demanding WTA tour schedule allows. 

The former world No.5 has said in the past that the coordination, balance and precise footwork of ballroom dancing directly transferred to the tennis court. She detailed her routine back in a 2017 interview, describing how seriously she treated it even amid a packed tennis schedule. 

“At home in Riga, when I am there I try and go ballroom dancing four times a week. It really helps with the footwork on the court. My favourite dance? The Samba, of course. I have the dress, the shoes, everything has to be matching. I go to a club and dance with the teacher there, he’s a professional dancer,” she said at the time.

She rose to a career-high ranking of world No. 5 and made history in 2018 as the first Latvian player, male or female, to win a Grand Slam singles title, triumphing at Roland Garros as an unseeded 20-year-old. In a delightful coincidence that same year, she also picked up “The Golden Mirror Ball,” the trophy awarded to the winner of Latvia’s version of Dancing with the Stars.

Ostapenko enjoys a well-earned break before the US hard-court swing

Ostapenko is currently enjoying a break after a productive July that included winning the Wimbledon mixed doubles title alongside Marcelo Arevalo. The triumph saw the pair come from a set down to beat Australia’s Storm Hunter and Marc Polmans 4-6, 7-5, 6-2 in just under two hours on Center Court.

Jelena Ostapenko has now won a Grand Slam in all three categories: singles, doubles and mixed doubles. This makes her only the seventh WTA player in the last 60 years to do so, a list that includes  Billie Jean King, Martina Navratilova, Martina Hingis, Serena Williams, Venus Williams and Barbora Krejcikova. It was also a personal redemption story, as Ostapenko had previously made it to two Wimbledon finals, falling short each time, a runner-up in mixed doubles in 2019 and another in ladies’ doubles last year. 

Speaking after the win, the Latvian reflected on the achievement and her partnership with Arevalo. “It’s been a great week. Now I am a Grand Slam champion in singles, doubles, and mixed doubles. I think it’s great to win all the categories,” she said. 

With that title to add to the resume that already included the 2017 French Open and 2024 US Open doubles title with Lyudmyla Kichenok, the 29-year-old had earned the time to pursue her other ambition. She will be returning to the North American hard-court swing, beginning at the Canadian Open on August 2, in both the singles and women’s doubles categories.