Elena Rybakina battles back to avert potential early exit against Danielle Collins at Abu Dhabi Open

Elena Rybakina had to battle from a set down to seal her progression to the latter stages of the Abu Dhabi Open as the World No.3 had to avert a scare against Danielle Collins who as usual acted the spoiler as the former won 4-6, 6-3, 6-3.

Collins took down Naomi Osaka in the opening round and in similar fashion, it was very much strong heavy baseline play that caused Rybakina problems and compared to the limited movement of Osaka at the minute, Rybakina wasn't able to pick apart Collins as easy as that matchup.

Collins took the opening set by outplaying her opponent in particular during the rallies and from the baseline and she looked to be heading towards a shock win. Only dropping one point behind the first serve in the first set, Rybakina didn't have the momentum at all with the American taking an early break. But Collins in aiming to seal the win would break Rybakina's serve quite easily would have hers broken back quite immediately. Rybakina as a result was able to turn the set in her favour and this gave her the impetus.

Rybakina took the early lead in the decider, but lost it as Rybakina though would break once more and this time held serve to make it 4-2 and this saw her head towards victory as she couldn't give any sort of retort to Rybakina in the end. But it is very much crisis averted for Rybakina after losing early at the Australian Open and only being at her best during Brisbane.