2019, the year of big choices
Last season was the turning point of Rybakina’s career so far. As she concluded her studies (she went to a regular school, with no attendance leeway for an athlete), she found herself at a crossroads. Her tennis results were good, but not enough to turn in a net profit, so her father advised her to move to the USA to play college tennis. World N.191 at 19: she was the ideal student-athlete candidate, and as a matter of fact received over 15 scholarship offers.
And yet Elena wasn’t sold on the idea, as she wanted to keep playing professionally in Europe, and that drove her to two essential decisions. The first one was technical in nature: in February 2019 she left the Spartak Moscow tennis club and hired a coach who would work solely with her, the Croat Stefano Vukov – because of this partnership, she moved her headquarters to Bratislava, at Dominika Cibulkova’s new Academy.
The second big decision was the citizenship swap, as she accepted an offer of financial support from the Kazakh federation under the condition of sailing under their flag. The switch happened on the day of her twentieth birthday, in June – she used to be a Russian teenager, she was now a 20-year-old Kazakh.
It’s hardly news that in the last few years the Russian federation hasn’t been swimming in a pool of gold, especially in comparison to the income the Kazakhs have at their disposal, but it’s still pretty hard to guess whether in Moscow there was a belief in Rybakina’s potential, or whether letting her go was considered not such an irreparable loss. The only hardened fact is that Elena represents Kazakhstan now, and this looks like one of the most far-sighted moves in “tennis transfer market” that the Astana federation has ever made.
At the same time as these decisions were being made, her climb to the top of the game’s Olympus continued. Once again, Rybakina’s ascent wasn’t built upon extraordinary feats, but rather on a steady growth: 78 matches played, 57 wins, 21 losses, 6 finals reached (4 at the ITF level), and among these, her first WTA crown, at the International event in Bucharest, where she didn’t drop a set the whole week, profiting from a draw in which most renowned foes beat themselves – the only Top 100 opponent she had to face was N.54, Viktoria Kuzmova.
Let’s say a couple more things about opponents’ ranks. In 2019, she won just two matches against Top 50 competition, one in Wuhan against Halep (she retired down 5-4 in the opening set), and one in Istanbul against Siniakova, 41st at the time. To sum it up, there are no otherworldly wins, but at the same time, if you start from the 191st spot you don’t get many chances to spare with the best.
The fact remains that her baby-step approach translates to piles of useful points, and a final ranking of N.38 in 2019 – a progression of 153 spots. Her status has changed completely, in a few months she’s gone from having to qualify for WTA Internationals to brushing a seed in the Slams. And at the end of last year, her name started to appear more and more in the final stages of tournaments: she reached a final in Nanchang (losing to Peterson), the semis in Luxembourg, and the quarter finals in Linz and Wuhan.
