Elena Rybakina won her first title of the season, and the first WTA 1000 title of her career, at the BNP Paribas Open on Sunday. Also she is the first woman tennis player to defeats no:1 and no:2 ranking players at the same tourtament, Turanews.kz reports.
The first set in the match which lasted 1 hour and 20 minutes, it turned out to be extremely stubborn with 24 draws in a tie-break. Rybakina won the first set with a score of 7:6 (13:11).
At second set, Rybakina won the game with a score of 6:4. Thus, Rybakina took revenge on Sobolenko for losing in the final of the Australian Open – 2023.
Recall that during the tournament, Rybakina defeated Sofia Kenin (USA), Paula Badosa (Spain), Varvara Gracheva (Russia), Karolina Muchova (Czech Republic), Iga Swiatek (Poland) and Arina Sobolenko (Belarus).
For the first time in her career, Elena won the WTA 1000 series tournament and became the first Kazakhstani woman who managed to win such a competition in singles. In total, Rybakina took the fourth single title in her career (2023 WTA 1000 Indian Wells, 2022 Grand Slam Wibledon, 2020 WTA 250 Hobart and 2019 WTA Bucharest). Thanks to the victory in Indian Wells, the leader of the women’s team of Kazakhstan earned 1,262,220 US dollars in prize money, 1,000 ranking points and will rise to 7th place in the updated women’s world ranking.
