ANALYSIS: What is next for Elena Rybakina with continued illness, injuries and coaching rumours galore

Elena Rybakina started the 2024 year strong, but it didn’t quite end up being the type of year many thought she would have, so let’s take a look at what exactly went wrong for the former world number 3.

Talking about the year Elena Rybakina has had so far is tricky to do because it’s very nuanced and requires lots of context to frame the bottom line properly. If you look at how this year compares to her previous years purely on the win totals, you won’t see much wrong. In fact, you might be impressed with what you’ve seen.

Rybakina finished the 2022 season with 43 wins, which is a pretty fair amount, and also 21 losses, which is not a small amount, to be completely fair. The next year, Rybakina posted a 47-17 record, which is obviously a better mark. She had more wins and fewer losses, so overall it’s obviously better. So, when we take her totals this year and compare them to those, there is only one conclusion: she’s been better this year than in both of those seasons.

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So far, Rybakina has totalled 41 wins and only 9 losses, which is a really impressive record in a vacuum, but the eye test and general context don’t make it look as impressive as it should be because, while her tennis has been super solid this year, there are other problems that have arisen that might signal trouble. So, with this record in mind, Rybakina is very likely to finish this year with the most wins she’s had in the last couple of years and also with the fewest number of losses. That’s the assumption right now, though we’ll see whether it ends up being that way at the end of the year.

So let’s break down what happened this year and how things went. She started off amazingly, winning the Brisbane Open trophy without too many problems. She played superb tennis, which is best highlighted by how easily she outplayed Aryna Sabalenka in the final, as it was 6-0 6-3. That was a brutal display and seemingly signalled that Rybakina might be poised for a major breakout this year—the year she finally takes over the Tour, as many have expected her to do for years.

She didn’t follow up that solid outing with another one, as Adelaide proved a rather short stay, but overall, she arrived in Melbourne with lots of confidence. Having stood in the final the year before certainly made many believe that she was going to have a good one. She didn’t, as she completely failed, losing against Anna Blinkova in a very bizarre match where she never found her best tennis.

Things got back on track in Abu Dhabi, where she played amazingly to win yet another trophy this year, and then followed that up with a run to the final in Doha, where Iga Swiatek barely beat her in a very tight final. Overall, it was a pretty strong start by Rybakina, who was one of the best players in the world in those first few weeks.

Then we had her first brush with physical problems as she played in Dubai as well but withdrew from the event due to a physical problem. It was apparently an illness, which would make an appearance a few more times this year. As crazy as it sounds, Rybakina battled quite a few illnesses this year, which aren’t even really injuries, but she seems to be susceptible to them.

The return happened a full month later at the Miami event, and it was immediately straight back to another final. Just like the year before, Rybakina made the final in Miami but was beaten in the final this time around by Danielle Collins, who was playing her best tennis ever. Overall, though, it was confirmation that Rybakina was still playing well when healthy.

That trend would continue through much of the year as she won Stuttgart by beating Swiatek in the final. She made the Madrid Open semi-final, skipped Rome due to an illness, and then made the Roland Garros quarter-finals. With summer, Rybakina started to deal with even more physical issues, alternating between minor injuries and sickness, though she managed to play well at Wimbledon, making the semi-final. Since then, though, it’s been a really bizarre sequence of events.

She missed the Olympics due to more physical problems, played poorly in Cincinnati upon her return, and then withdrew from the US Open with more physical problems. We’re at that point where it’s not just a minor thing because it’s happened so many times this year that you do have to wonder what the future is going to bring for Rybakina.

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On the one hand, her results and level have been tremendous and by far the 3rd best behind Sabalenka and Swiatek, and at times even better than theirs, but on the other hand, we have a player who basically can’t make it to the court in the past two months. She’s never been the most durable player in the sense that she’s missed lots of tennis before, which you can see by the amount of matches she’s played each year. You don’t see that number even coming close to 70 or 80, but she shouldn’t be having so many problems with it.

She’s still fairly young; she practises well, does gym work regularly, and she’s quite dedicated to her tennis career, so having so many issues with sicknesses or physical problems like proper injuries shouldn’t be happening. In any case, it is, and that’s a problem. It’s a problem because if you can’t play regularly, then your level won’t matter because so much of what is important in tennis is about consistency and how much you can play.

With that in mind, what does her future look like? Well, it depends on how you look at it. If you trust her to figure this out and become a player who will be able to compete regularly, then she’s going to be one of the best players in the world for a very long time. Her tennis has never been an issue this year because when she did play, she mostly played really well and was beating very good players. She has wins over both Sabalenka and Swiatek on their best surfaces, which tells you all you need to know.

So, if she manages to figure out her physical issues, then she will be good to go. There is very little doubt about that. There is, however, a certain amount of doubt because of what has been going on in the past two months. Some very bizarre stuff, actually, because recently, Elena Rybakina parted ways with her longtime coach Stefano Vukov. Now, they’ve always had somewhat of a strange relationship and dynamic, which created headlines in the past. Quite a few tennis analysts have talked about that in the past, noting that something seemed off there.

Splitting with a tennis coach isn’t that strange overall, but the timing when it happened was a bit strange. Then we got reports of Vukov being suspended from the WTA, which is certainly very notable news because that doesn’t happen for no reason. It’s usually a very bad reason when something like that happens, but there haven’t been any spectacular confirmations whether that was true or not.

Then some rumours circulated about something big coming out about Vukov and the whole situation with Rybakina, which again added only more weirdness to the whole thing, so now we have this shroud of mystery around Rybakina and what has been going on recently.

She’s been withdrawn from events since it all happened, and we’ve yet to really see her on the tennis courts. Nobody knows what really went down when it comes to the coach and her or what the reason for the split is. She hasn’t really spoken about it either, so we’re just going to have to wait and see what happens. It does cast some more doubt on the future and what might happen with her. So overall, there is a lot of mystery going on.

If we anticipate the best-case scenario, which would be Rybakina working through her physical issues and this whole coaching situation resolving well, then the future should be bright. As we mentioned several times, the quality of her as a tennis player was never in doubt, and she’s played the best she’s ever played this year when she was fully healthy and there was nothing going on in her team.

If she doesn’t figure out her physical issues and they keep plaguing her, then her future might be quite bleak because ultimately, if she can’t play regularly, she will stagnate as a player. We won’t speculate about the coaching situation because there aren’t any indications of what might have happened there. The hope of every fan is that it isn’t anything spectacularly serious, but it might be, considering the rumours and reports.

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