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MELBOURNE, Australia — For Elena Rybakina, things are rarely straightforward, even though they appear beautifully simple.Her game is languidly devastating. She has a cleaner strike than anyone on the tour, the biggest serve, and an even temperament that is the polar opposite of the far more expressive world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka.
In beating Sabalenka on Saturday to win the Australian Open, her second Grand Slam title after Wimbledon in 2022, Rybakina has reestablished herself as a major player at the top of women’s tennis.
She beat both of the top two, Sabalenka and Iga Świątek, en route to the Melbourne title this week, not dropping a set until the final. She has won 20 of her past 22 matches, going 10-0 against top-10 opponents in that time, and she is only the sixth woman this century to win 10 straight matches against top-10 players.
Saturday’s win adds another layer to an already story-rich WTA Tour, with five different winners of the past five Slams. All of those players, including Coco Gauff but possibly not Madison Keys, are expected to be competing at the sharp end of the remaining majors this year. Ditto the American pair Amanda Anisimova and Jessica Pegula, creating a heavyweight feel at the top of the sport.
Rybakina is the one everyone will want to avoid at the moment, because when she is in this kind of ruthlessly consistent form, she is nigh on unbeatable. Rybakina has won more matches than anyone on the WTA Tour in the six months since last year’s Wimbledon. And when asked if becoming the world No. 1 was a target in a news conference after Saturday’s win, she said: “Yeah, I have big goals.”
Beautifully simple. But not straightforward.
Rybakina, who was born in Russia but represents Kazakhstan, had an added wrinkle to her first Grand Slam title. At the 2022 edition of Wimbledon, the tournament barred Russian and Belarusian athletes from competing, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In response, the ATP and WTA Tours stripped Wimbledon of its ranking points. Rybakina, who switched to representing Kazakhstan in 2018, got caught in the middle of what remains a contentious issue in tennis, and received zero ranking points for her title.
This Australian Open win comes 12 months after her coach, Stefano Vukov, was barred from entering Melbourne Park. Rybakina had fired Vukov in September of 2024, but then decided to bring him back onto her team. But on the eve of the 2025 Australian Open, The Athletic exclusively reported that Vukov had been provisionally suspended by the WTA Tour during a Code of Conduct investigation.
Vukov had denied breaching the WTA’s code, and Rybakina, the world No. 6 at the time, had repeatedly stated that Vukov’s conduct towards her has never been abusive.
In February of 2025, the WTA barred Vukov from coaching and obtaining credentials for a year. The tour’s chief executive, Portia Archer, wrote in a confidential summary of the investigation that Vukov had engaged “in abuse of authority and abusive conduct” toward Rybakina, including “compromising or attempting to compromise [her] psychological, physical or emotional well-being.”
“Definitely never abused anyone,” Vukov said via text message last January.
His violations included refusing to leave Rybakina’s New York hotel in 2024 after a representative for the player told him he had been fired. Vukov flooded Rybakina’s phone with text messages and more than 100 calls — according to sources with personal and professional relationships with Rybakina who were present at the hotel — as he sought another chance to convince Rybakina that her tennis career could not thrive without him.
During the investigation and following the ban, Rybakina maintained her position Vukov had “never mistreated her,” and the coach appealed the suspension ahead of last year’s French Open. It was lifted in August, after Vukov and the WTA entered into private arbitration.
After winning the WTA Finals in November, Rybakina declined a photo with Archer at the trophy ceremony. Shortly before she received the Daphne Akhurst Memorial Cup on stage Saturday night, Vukov received his own coach’s trophy.
Rybakina had paid tribute to Vukov after beating Jessica Pegula Thursday to reach the final. “It’s a big help, because of course he knows me the best,” she said in a news conference.
“With his advices on the court during the matches, it definitely makes a difference.”
At the moment, Rybakina is performing with clarity and at a level no one can match. “I played great until a certain point, and then I couldn’t resist that aggression that she had on court today,” Sabalenka said in her news conference after Saturday’s match.
“I think that definitely she has more confidence, and she goes for her shots without any doubt,” Sabalenka said of the changes to Rybakina’s game since she began her peerless run of form in mid-October.
“She did a better job in handling that pressure moment, that’s for sure,” Sabalenka said.
Rybakina put her good form down to “her very aggressive style” and said that she “always believed that I could come back to the level I was.”
Rybakina’s next target is reeling in Sabalenka and Świątek in, as she tried and failed to do a few years ago before being replaced by Coco Gauff as their closest rival. But Rybakina will be the world No. 3 Monday, only a few hundred points off Świątek. This was also the third tournament in which she’s beaten the world No. 1 and No. 2 — only Venus and Serena Williams have done so at more tournaments in WTA Tour history.
And with Sabalenka still trying to figure out her Grand Slam finals problem, and Świątek saying she could miss some big events to work on her game, there is an opportunity for Rybakina to firmly entrench herself at the top of the sport. It could be beautifully simple. The coming season will tell.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
Tennis, Women's Tennis
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