Elena Rybakina, 23, hopes to add more Grand Slam success to her name in the near future. Last summer, Rybakina became a Grand Slam champion after beating Ons Jabeur in the Wimbledon final. At the start of this season, Rybakina fell just short of winning her second Grand Slam after Aryna Sabalenka recovered from a set down to beat the Kazakh in the Australian Open final.
Recently, Rybakina won her first WTA 1000 title in Indian Wells and also achieved a career-high ranking of No 7 in the world. “Everything that happened in the last year was a combined effort of the whole team & a huge experience for me.
For the future, I’ll try to keep the same bar & improve my game & progress in all aspects. I hope I will be able to win some more Grand Slams,” Rybakina told a Kazakhstan TV channel, via The Tennis Letter.
Elena Rybakina: “Everything that happened in the last year was a combined effort of the whole team & a huge experience for me.
For the future, I’ll try to keep the same bar & improve my game & progress in all aspects. I hope I will be able to win some more Grand Slams”. pic.twitter.com/Kq1BdF8qZt — The Tennis Letter (@TheTennisLetter) April 14, 2023
Rybakina backed by a tennis legend to win more Grand Slams
Tracy Austin, a former two-time US Open champion, recently explained why Rybakina can be a threat at the Grand Slam level for many more years.
“It’s so tempting for people to ask – Is Elena Rybakina one of the most underrated tennis players? For me, I think it’s more under the radar because of her demeanor. We know that she kinda has that low pulse, she doesn’t show much emotion.
When she won Wimbledon, it was kind of a gentle fist pump. The third quality that makes her under the radar is that she’s a little streaky. She is so risky in her game style, so you can have days where she’s off. Therefore, she can beat anybody on a given day, but she can have these losses to anybody as well.
What she has talked about is the desire to be more consistent. I think that she can actually find that. She’s very strong and working hard, she’s very hungry. She’s won one Major, so why not more? I definitely see that she can be a sustainable contender for Majors in the future,” Austin said last month.
