How Elena Rybakina rose to a "challenging" 2025 with WTA Finals victory

When Riyadh began, I wrote that the unifying theme among its players’ 2025 seasons was resilience. Aryna Sabalenka, Iga Swiatek, Amanda Anisinova, and others had all watched their games unravel at some point, before bouncing back to win bigger.

I didn’t put Elena Rybakina on that list, but now it looks like I should have.

It may seem like years ago now, but she started 2025 at the center of controversy. With her coach, Stefano Vukov, in danger of being banned from the tour for allegedly abusive behavior, she hired Goran Ivanisevic, only to turn around and invite Vukov to join them in Australia. That was too much chaos even for Goran, who wished her luck and went on his way.

That was a lot of early-season turmoil, both emotional and professional, for a player to endure, and Rybakina never really got on track afterward. A two-time Grand Slam finalist, she failed to make the quarters at any of the four majors, and her coaching situation remained unresolved. Finally, Vukov was cleared to return in August, and she brought him back on board right away. That seemed to help, but she still had to make an 11th-hour title run in Ningbo last month to squeak into Riyadh as the final qualifier.

“This season was challenging,” Rybakina said as the WTA Finals got underway. “I won’t say it was my best season definitely. But I’m happy that in the end I qualified also and I’m here. I played full season. Didn’t skip much. Played a lot. But, of course, I had better results in the previous years.”

There was an upside to all that tennis, and the extra events she had to schedule in October: She may have been jet-lagged when she arrived in Riyadh, but she was match sharp. Sharper, it turned out, than anyone else. She began with a decisive win over Amanda Anisimova; she blasted Iga Swiatek 6-1, 6-0 over the last two sets of their round-robin match; she didn’t cave against Jessica Pegula in the semis, even when she was a set down and looked destined to lose. And on Saturday, she was better than the WTA’s best, Aryna Sabalenka.

Sabalenka likes to say that no one can overpower her, and 98% of the time she’s right. But not today. While the 6-3, 7-6(0) scoreline was fairly close, the stats from the match tell a more one-sided story. Rybakina hit 13 aces, and led Sabalenka by an astonishing 36 to 12 in the winner count. Rybakina was also 10 of 12 at net, she wasn’t broken once, and she was flawless in the most pressure-filled moment of the match, the second-set tiebreaker. Even when she was up 6-0 in the breaker, she said she wasn’t taking any chances.

“I was trying to stay very focused,” Rybakina said. “I think even in the tiebreak, only when I heard the ‘game, set, match,’ then I realized that the match is finished, because I had also experience being, being up in the tiebreak and losing it. So honestly, I was just focusing really.”

Rybakina beat Sabalenka at her own game, with a barrage of line-clipping aces and cold baseline winners. But it was a defensive effort that may have proved most crucial. Up 0-40 on Sabalenka’s serve in the first set, Rybakina seemed to be well out of the next rally. The long and lanky Kazakh will never be known for her speed, but she worked hard to track down a volley and send up a lob. The shot surprised Sabalenka, who put her smash into the net. Rybakina had the only break she would need.

“She played incredible,” Sabalenka said. “I feel like I did my best today. It didn’t work.”

Resilience was also the watchword for Sabalenka in 2025. She took a series of brutal late-Slam defeats, but never let despair seep in, and ended up coming through at the last major of the year, at the US Open. But this loss underscores her tendency to make things more complicated in big finals than she does in other matches. She fought back against a better player on Saturday, only to put herself in a deeper hole. As in all of her important losses, there was never a sense of freedom to her game.

🖥️📲REPLAY: Elena Rybakina def. Aryna Sabalenka, 2025 WTA Finals F

With the win, Rybakina reminds everyone that, three and a half years after her lone Slam win at Wimbledon, she still has a top-tier game, and is a threat to beat anyone on the right day. She also remains a bit of a mystery, personality-wise and form-wise, with a penchant for head-scratching, out-of-nowhere defeats and sudden withdrawals. But with her coaching situation sorted, she should start 2026 the same way she did 2025: At the center of the tennis conversation. This time, hopefully, for a better reason.

“It gives a lot of motivation, and hopefully I get some good rest and I can keep this mentality and bring it to the next season,” Rybakina said. “Hopefully we can improve even more and start strong.”