Elena Rybakina

Rybakina is a top female tennis player with seven career titles, including the 2022 Wimbledon women's singles Grand Slam. In June 2023, she reached her best ranking of world No. 3. She temporarily lost it to Coco Gauff, but regained it after winning Brisbane 2024. In the Australian Open she lost to Anna Blinkova. They played in that game the longest tie-break in Grand Slam history. Blinkova won it 22-20 and went through to R3. In 2024 Elena Rybakina already won 2 WTA 500 titles including Abu Dhabi. She lost the final of the Qatar Open in Doha to Iga Swiatek one week later playing her ninth match in ten days.

Birthday: June 17, 1999

Birthplace: Moscow (defected to Kazakhstan)

Rybakina's style is powerful serving, strong right-handed hits, and a calm demeanor both on and off the court.

Height: 1.84m / 6′ 1″

Instagram of the Kazakhstani Athlete uses Lena as first name (@lenarybakina)

Rybakina was born in Moscow, Russia on June 17, 1999. She represented Russia until 2018, but then started representing Kazakhstan when she entered the top 200 in the world rankings.

As a junior, Rybakina impressed, rising as high as number three in the world rankings and reaching two Grand Slam semi-finals.

Elena Rybakina never had tennis training when she was young, which is quite remarkable. Her parents were always convinced that school needed to come first.

Only after becoming a pro at 17 years old, her individual training sessions started! This probably makes her the player with the highest margin of progress of all professional WTA players.  She stayed hidden from the Russian Tennis Federation, so it was easy for her to decide to switch to Kazakhstan.

Rybakina made her debut on the WTA Tour at the Kremlin Cup in October 2017. However, Irina-Camelia Begu defeated her in the first round.

In February 2018, Rybakina played in the St. Petersburg Trophy. She won against Bacsinszky and Garcia, but lost in the third round.

Rybakina’s senior Grand Slam debut would come at the 2019 French Open. She lost in the first round to Kateřina Siniaková with a score of 6-7, 1-6 after going through the qualifying process.

Her first WTA Tour title would come a few months later at the Bucharest Open. After upsetting second seed Viktória Kužmová during her run, Rybakina would defeat Patricia Maria Țig in the final.

Following up on that breakthrough success, Rybakina would have a stand-out year in 2020. She reached five finals. She won the Hobart International. She entered the top 20 in the world rankings for the first time in her career.

Rybakina would reach the first Grand Slam quarter-final of her career at the 2021 French Open with a run that included arguably her biggest win to date as she defeated Serena Williams in straight sets to reach the last eight before falling to Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova in a three-set thriller.

At the Tokyo Olympics, Rybakina lost out in the bronze medal match to Elina Svitolina but her continued progression saw her rise into the world’s top 15 for the first time, becoming the first Kazakhstani to do so.

In 2022, Rybakina’s career-defining moment came at the Wimbledon Championships. Straight-set wins over CoCo Vandeweghe, Bianca Andreescu, Zheng Qinwen and Petra Martić saw Rybakina into the last eight. From there a hard-fought, three-set win over Ajla Tomljanović was followed by a 6-3, 6-3 victory over former Wimbledon winner Simona Halep in the semi-finals and a win over Ons Jabeur where Rybakina had to come from a set down on centre court to claim the title.
After winning the Wimbleodn title she walked off the court smiling, shook hands with Jabeur, shortly applauded the crowd, waved the racket and sat down calmly  on the chair. This made BBC LIVE commentator John McEnroe jokingly say "Didn't even react when she WON Wimbledon!" Rybakina herself told later that her main thought afterwards was 'feeling tired and happy that a tough match against amazing opponent (Jabeur) was finished". In her press conference she showed her down to earth style again telling the press room she never thought of playing tennis for money, but eventually the emotions became too much when asked about her parents, with one fan reacting "the mixture of both sweet sentiments of her parents and her ability to add humor into her outpour of emotions was just amazing".

Elena Rybakina continued her impressive form in 2023, reaching the final of the Australian Open, defeating world number one Iga Swiatek in the process before losing out to Aryna Sabalenka in the final despite winning the first set.

Rybakina’s first WTA 1000 title came at the 2023 Indian Wells championship where she again defeated world number one Iga Swiatek in straight sets to reach the final before this time avenging her Australian Open loss by defeating Aryna Sabalenka in straight sets to also win the title. A win in Rome later on against Kalinina helped her break into the Top 5. After that Italian win she struggled in the next 2 tournaments loosing to Sorribes Tormo in the third round (walkover from the Spaniard) and to Donna Vekic in Berlin. On 12 June 2023, she achieved her career-high ranking of world No. 3.
Wimbledon 2023 saw her winning against Rogers, Cornet, Boulter, and Haddad-Maia before falling to Ons Jabeur in the quarter-finals. In August 2023 she lost the Montreal semi-final to Samsonova to which she also lost Beijing's semi-final 2 months later. By that time she had already stated she was struggling with fatigue and some weird WTA scheduling. In between she was defeated by Romanian Cirstea at the US Open 2023 in the third round.
At the end of the year she fell to Aryna Sabalenka in the Masters Cup 2023 after having lost to Iga Swiatek, but having booked a win versus Greek Maria Sakkari.

Rybakina started the season firing on all cylinders. She won Brisbane International against Sabalenka and only lost one service game in the entire Brisbane International tournament. 

Elena Rybakina’s coach is Stefano Vukov. He is a former Croatian tennis player who played in various ITF Men’s World Tennis events as well as the ITF Futures Tour. Vukov is known for his analytic prowess. He is considered being instrumental in the development of Rybakina’s game. They began their professional partnership at the beginning of 2019 and have been working together since then.

Yonex has sponsored Rybakina for clothing and shoes since the 2023 French Open. She had previously been endorsed by Adidas from the start of 2020, and by Nike. She uses a Yonex VCore 100 racket. On 24 January 2023, Rybakina began to cooperate with the Kazakhstan Bank RBK.

In March 2023, Rybakina donated 35 million Kazakstani tenge to rising female tennis players in Kazakhstan.