Elena Rybakina fends off Jessica Pegula comeback for Australian Open final with Aryna Sabalenka
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Rybakina is not the world No. 2, but the No. 5 seed is the opponent Sabalenka would least like to face. She won their last meeting in straight sets, including a tiebreak to love against a player who has won their last 20 at Grand-Slam level. That was the WTA Tour Finals championship match in November, one of Rybakina’s 20 wins in her past 21 matches. In that time, she has picked up two titles and posted a 9-0 record against top-10 opponents.
With her huge serve, easy power, clean ball-striking and underrated ability to generate huge speed even when extended, Rybakina is one of the very few players who can take the racket out of Sabalenka’s hands, as Madison Keys did to win last year’s final.
She is also the world No. 1’s temperamental opposite. Where Sabalenka wears her emotions on court and lives through them, Rybakina is near-totally zen and unreadable, even though Pegula’s late surge in the second set brought some mild anguish across Rybakina’s face. When she won the Wimbledon title in 2022, her reaction was more akin to someone being told they could finish work early than someone who had just won their first Grand Slam.
Sabalenka may not appreciate how relaxed Rybakina will seem when she, by contrast, will be outwardly battling the stress of trying to avoid losing a third Grand Slam final out of four.
Sabalenka was busy performing media duties after hammering Elina Svitolina in her own semifinal, but when she sits down to watch Rybakina’s defeat of Pegula Thursday night, she will see a rival playing with complete conviction, bar a late wobble down the stretch. Things otherwise look so uncomplicated for Rybakina when her game is song, built around arguably the best serve on the WTA Tour.
She won the first six points of the match against Pegula, breaking early to go 3-0 up after 10 minutes. That break was all Rybakina needed to roll through the first set, winning 77 per cent of first-serve points and 79 percent on the second. She didn’t face a break point.
As against Iga Świątek in the quarters, Rybakina’s serving fluency meant she could tee off once the rallies got started, rocking Pegula back on her heels so much that she frequently gestured to her box about the experience.
Pegula, who hadn’t dropped a set all tournament until Thursday night, had found a way to diffuse and redirect Keys and Amanda Anisimova’s power back on them in the previous two rounds, but this was another level. And when she had 30-30 on her opponent’s serve early in the second set, Rybakina slammed the door shut with a huge ace down the T. She then broke in the next game for 2-1, with a devastating inside-out forehand return winner.
The pair then exchanged breaks, before a pair of aces helped Rybakina hold for 4-2. Pegula, a U.S. Open finalist two years ago and in the best form of her career, was fighting hard, but it felt like she was always swimming against the tide. When a fourth ace flew by her to move Rybakina to 5-3, Pegula let out a resigned “yeah” — summing up the powerlessness she must have been feeling. A game later it looked set to be all over, as Rybakina attempted to ease her opponent into submission one last time.
A forehand return that flew onto the line for a winner to bring up a third match point drew another look of disbelief from Pegula, before a rare Rybakina forehand miss earned an even rarer show of annoyance.
But Rybakina could not convert any of them, and the very next game Pegula hit two return winners to go up 0-30. Rybakina drew even with the strength of her serve, but one tight forehand in the net and another long gave Pegula a break. The tension was clear, as Rybakina immediately broke back before again being broken, tightening up as the finish line approached and what had looked like a routine win instead headed for a tiebreak.
Once there, Pegula had two set points to take the match the distance, but Rybakina staved them off on the back of her serve. setting up a forehand onto the baseline with one huge one before an ace down the T took her to a fourth match point. This time there was no mistake, as one last clean-as-a-whistle backhand flew past Pegula for a return winner.
After their straight-set semifinal wins, even with the late tension in the latter, Sabalenka and Rybakina will now meet with neither having dropped a set on their way to the final. They are undeniably the two best players in the world right now, and their meeting will be a repeat of the final here in 2023, which Sabalenka won in three thrilling sets. That was Sabalenka’s first major title, while Rybakina has not been to a major final since.
Everything is set up for another barnburner Saturday, when the sequence of one-sided and straight-sets matches will be tested to the max by two such well-matched players. So while this is the final Sabalenka probably wanted to avoid, it is also one that fans desperate for a sustained competitive encounter will be relishing.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
Tennis, Women's Tennis
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