From injury scare to US Open champion: Elena Rybakina rises to number one

Elena Rybakina (Photo Reuters) NEW YORK CITY: Elena Rybakin’s US Open seemed to be over before it started.Foot and ankle injuries in Cincinnati left the Kazakh limping midway through the tournament, leaving her Flushing Meadows dream in tatters and her pursuit of the world No.1 ranking suddenly hanging in the balance.Rybakina took a week off to give her left leg time to heal.When she began her campaign in New York ten days later, she started cautiously, testing her leg, particularly on her serve, the shot most plagued by injury. By Saturday afternoon, caution had turned to conviction.A remarkable display of mental and physical resilience led Rybakina to her first US Open crown, a 6-4, 5-7, 6-2 victory over Belarusian powerhouse Aryna Sabalenkova and her third Grand Slam title.And by the end of it, the woman who had spent the last 24 months negotiating the upheaval was sitting atop the tennis world.“I always believed it was possible,” she said with a joyful expression. Smiles interrupting her sentences.She won Wimbledon in 2022 and reached the final of the Australian Open the following year, but there was no Grand Slam title.“I feel like now I have a great team, great people around me and we continue to work. It finally paid off and I’m super happy, very proud.”In her coaching corner are 39-year-old Croatian Stefano Vukov and Stanislav Khmarskyi, who joined the team as co-coaches in 2025. Italian Aldo Chiari is her strength and conditioning coach and Adam Jones is her striking partner.Vukov, the most vocal of her benchers, was banned from the Tour for eight months (January 2025 to August) for breaching the code of conduct regarding his behavior towards Rybakin.The Kazakh started the 2025 season in partnership with Goran Ivanišević and later signed David Sanguinetti, Vukov’s friend. Still, Vukov remained a constant presence in her tennis life away from the cameras.At the 2025 WTA Finals, she refused a photo with WTA CEO Portia Archer, demonstrating her displeasure at Vukov’s suspension. Archer later resigned, and Rybakina’s rise to No. 1 added another layer to the relationship and a period that often took place under intense scrutiny.Despite all that, Rybakina kept playing.And now she’s done more than just return to the top. She built the most complete season of her career, winning the WTA Finals (2025), the Australian Open and the US Open to become world no.“I feel like this tournament was more stressful because I was playing No. 1 and then of course the injury that happened the week before,” she said. “So every day was a bit of a challenge, but I felt that I was calmer in those situations than when things like that happened like before.”Even in the final, when the title was within reach, nerves came.Rybakina, serving for the championship, served two double faults before sealing the match with her 12th ace. It was a fitting image of the evening, the pressure, the risk, then the nervousness of trusting her greatest weapon when it mattered most.“On the other hand, she’s a great player and she knows how to go for her shots and that I actually need to win it myself. Yeah, I feel like it was just a lot of pressure, nerves.”Rybakina is already looking beyond the celebration, even though the next goal is obvious. A career Grand Slam is now within sight, with only the French Open missing from her collection.“Well, the main priority, like I said, I’m not getting any younger, is to try to stay healthy and definitely get the calendar right,” she said.“The goal is always the biggest tournaments, you want to win them.”She climbed from the brink of missing the US Open to winning it, from No. 2 to No. 1, from a year of uncertainty to a season of remarkable success.And yet for Rybakina, the climb was not over.“Yes, we’ll see what happens, but there’s definitely a lot of work ahead of us,” she said. “The work is never done, to be honest.