She was skyrocketing up the WTA rankings before the COVID-19 pandemic ground tennis to a halt, and at Roland Garros, Elena Rybakina is showing why.
The 21-year-old is having her best-ever run at a Grand Slam this fortnight, and sealed a place in the quarterfinals with a stunning fourth-round win over Serena Williams in straight sets on Sunday.
Part of a roster of six first-time Grand Slam quarterfinalists in Paris, she's one of just three players in the last eight to have not dropped a set so far, along with defending champion Iga Swiatek and American teenager Coco Gauff.
She's also through to the quarterfinals of the doubles tournament alongside Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, whom she'll face on Tuesday.
A big hitter and bigger server with a famously cool on-court demeanor, here's more on the top-ranked Kazakh:
The Elena Rybakina File
Age: 21
Birthplace: Moscow, Russia
Current Rank: No. 22
Career-High Rank: No. 17 (February 2020)
Best US Open Finish: Round 2 (2020)
The Baseline
- There was no player more in-form than Rybakina to start last season, as she reached four finals in the first seven weeks of the year. She won her second WTA singles title in Hobart, Tasmania ahead of the Australian Open, and was runner-up at events in Shenzhen, China; Dubai and St. Petersburg, Russia. She won 20 matches by late-Februray, the fastest to rank up that many WTA victories in more than 10 years. Her victories in the first eight weeks of 2020 included reigning Australian Open champion Sofia Kenin, Karolina Pliskova, Elise Mertens and Maria Sakkari.
- Following the hiatus, however, she struggled to capture the same form: she went 8-6 from August through October, despite reaching another final on clay in Strasbourg, France. While she reached the quarterfinals in Abu Dhabi to begin 2021, Rybakina revealed this week in Paris that she was adversely affected by the "hard quarantine" that she and numerous other players experienced ahead of the Australian Open—those who unable to leave their hotel room for two weeks ahead of the year's first major. Her French Open run marks her first consecutive victories since January.
- After winning her first career WTA singles title on the clay courts of Bucharest, Romania in the summer of 2019, Rybakina came to the US Open already as one to watch. Ranked No. 67, she needed to compete in qualifying—her ranking at the entry deadline was outside the Top 100—but she overcame the unique circumstance to cruise through three matches and make her US Open main draw debut.
- Rybakina first showed glimpses of her talent as an 18-year-old ranked 450th in the world. A qualifying wild card at the St. Petersburg Ladies' Trophy, a WTA 500 event, she beat former top 10 player Timea Bacsinszky for her first WTA main-draw victory, and saved a match point to beat then-world No.4 Caroline Garcia from match point down to reach the quarterfinals in her second tour-level event.
- Born in Russia but representing Kazakhstan since 2018, Rybakina reached a career-high of world No. 3 in the junior rankings and was a semifinalist at the 2017 junior Australian and French Opens.
They Said It!
"When I was small, of course, I was watching her matches on TV. So many Grand Slams. During my young ages, I was watching and expecting... I mean, it's difficult to expect anything, because you watch on TV and that's completely different when you come on court and you feel the power and everything... I was ready." - Rybakina on beating Serena Williams
