Elena Andreyevna Rybakina (born 17 June 1999) is a Russian-born Kazakhstani professional tennis player. She has a career-high singles ranking of world No. 3 by the Women's Tennis Association (WTA), making her the first Kazakhstani to be ranked in the world's top 10 and the current No. 1 Kazakh player in women's singles. Rybakina is also the first player from Kazakhstan to win a title at a major tournament, claiming the 2022 Wimbledon Championships. Rybakina has reached thirteen other finals on the WTA Tour, winning four further tournaments, including two WTA 1000 titles at the 2023 Indian Wells Open and the 2023 Italian Open.
Rybakina reached a career-high combined junior ranking of No. 3, entered two junior major semifinals, and won a Grade-A title at the Trofeo Bonfiglio in 2017. Born and playing as a Russian, Rybakina switched federations to Kazakhstan in June 2018, having just entered the top 200 for the first time a month earlier. Prior to the switch, she did not have an individual coach as a junior, and did not hire a traveling coach until early 2019. Her first consistent success on the WTA Tour came in mid-2019 and was highlighted by her first WTA Tour title at the Bucharest Open as well as her top 100 debut. Rybakina made a breakthrough in the 2020 season, during which she led the tour with five finals, including four in her first five events of the year.
Rybakina is noted for her excellent serve and can generate high-powered groundstrokes. She plays primarily from the baseline and has good movement for her height.
Early life and background
Elena Rybakina was born on 17 June 1999 in Moscow to Andre and Ekaterina. She started playing sports with her older sister, Anna, from a very young age, originally focusing on gymnastics and ice skating. Upon being told that she was too tall to become a professional in either of those sports, her father suggested she switch to tennis instead because of his interest in the sport. Rybakina began playing tennis at the age of six.
Rybakina moved from the Dynamo Sports Club to the Spartak Tennis Club, where she had several accomplished coaches. She trained with former top-10 player Andrey Chesnokov and former top-100 player Evgenia Kulikovskaya. One of her fitness coaches was Irina Kiseleva, a World Championship gold medalist in the modern pentathlon.
Rybakina did not have individual training until she was a junior, instead practising in a group of about eight players up until age 15 and a group of four players through age 18. She also only played tennis about two hours per day and trained in fitness for three hours a day. Her time for tennis was limited in part because she attended a regular high school not specialized for athletes and needed to balance tennis with schoolwork.
Junior career
Rybakina is a former world No. 3 junior. She began playing on the ITF Junior Circuit in November 2013 at the age of 14. The following March, she won her first title at her second career event, the Grade-3 Almetievsk Cup. She played her first Grade-2 event in June at the Ozerov Cup in Moscow, finishing runner-up to compatriot Anna Blinkova. She began playing Grade-1 events from the start of 2015, but did not have any success until she reached the final at the Belgian International Junior Championships in May, losing to Katharina Hobgarski.
Rybakina made her junior-major debut later in the year at the US Open, where she reached the third round. Following an opening-round loss at the 2016 Australian Open, she won back-to-back Grade-1 titles. She continued to struggle at the junior Grand Slam and other Grade-A events in singles for the rest of the year. Her best result of 2016 at the Grade A-events came in doubles when she finished runner-up to Olesya Pervushina and Anastasia Potapova at the Trofeo Bonfiglio, alongside Amina Anshba in an all-Russian final.
The 2017 season was Rybakina's last year on the junior tour. In the middle of the season, she won her first and only Grade-A title at the Trofeo Bonfiglio, defeating Iga Świątek in the final. She also fared better at the Grand Slam events compared to previous years, losing in the semifinals of the Australian Open and the French Open to eventual champions Marta Kostyuk and Whitney Osuigwe, respectively. She finished her junior career at the first round-robin edition of the ITF Junior Masters, the junior counterpart to the WTA Finals. She won one match in her round-robin group and finished in seventh place.