US Open Day 14 - Rybakina shows why she is No.1
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What happened in the US Open women’s final and why does it confirm Rybakina as world No. 1?
Hello and welcome to the tennis podcast coming to you from Flushing Meadows, New York, on the night of the U.S. Open women's singles final, a final which saw Elena Rabakina confirm herself as the best player in the world. Thursday, she confirmed herself as the new world number one. And just an hour or so ago here on the Arthur Ashe Stadium, she became a US Open champion for the first time, adding to a total of now three major titles. If you don't already know, I'm Catherine Whittaker. And alongside me tonight and every night of this US Open are my co-hosts, David Law and Matt Roberts. All of us were lucky enough to watch that final tonight. A pretty engrossing tennis match, in my opinion, with moments of confusion.
Great jeopardy, even greater tension. And I think all of us came away, David, feeling like we have watched the best player in the world win that trophy tonight.
Yes, you really underlined it tonight. It was one of those strange ranking situations whereby she'd already earned the world number one ranking on Monday, and yet she might lose to the player that she's about to displace, which would have been a kind of a bit unsatisfactory in a sort of narrative sense, even though she absolutely deserved it. But to see her underline it like this... leaves you in no doubt. And to have done it, having come into the tournament with question marks over her ankle, her Achilles, if you think it was only a couple of weeks ago, she could barely walk. She's just gradually built herself into this tournament, didn't even know if she'd get to the start line. And then tonight...
She just showed you what makes her so special in a number of ways, you know, from the peerless serve, and it wasn't peerless all the way through because she had a really tough start with it, but once it got cranking, I mean, there's just not another weapon out there in the women's game like that Elena Rybak in a serve, to the piercing ground strokes, which just put... Sabalenka on the back foot in a way that nobody else can. And also the nerve, the nerve at the end. She did wobble at times because she's human. Anybody wobbles and it's just fine. But she found a way to still win. And having never gone beyond the fourth round of the tournament before, that she's now won. It's massively impressive.
Yeah, you are welcome, Elena. I feel like we sealed this for her yesterday when we all, one after another, predicted Irina Savalenka to win as we had one after another done for the semifinals as well, getting them wrong and lots of people on the bar being like, yeah, that was the moment I knew Rebecca was going to win. And we definitely have to hold our hands up there. But she was... Fantastic, really. The whole match, I was blown away by how well Rebecca was playing. It was six and a half games until she made an unforced error. She was hitting the ball so sweetly. And the commentators on Sky were saying that was a very harsh unforced error that they thought was given to her there. It was a pretty flawless opening set from the ground.
And, you know... But as David said, for her to then lose that second set and be totally unaffected by that momentum change, heading into a deciding set of a Grand Slam final and to just play that one with such authority as well was so impressive. And, yeah, I really enjoyed the match and have really enjoyed this trilogy of... Sabalenka, Rabatkin, Grand Slam finals that they've now played against each other, two in Australia and one here. They've all gone to deciding sets. They're all really compelling to me. And yeah, Rabatkin, a deserving winner today. She was definitely the better player on the court.
And do you remember how worried we were ahead of the first Grand Slam
final they
played against one another in Australia three years ago?
Yeah, we thought it might not
work. I remember doing a preview for that final on that pod and being really worried that there'd be no rallies, it would be this style match, that they'd be too similar in styles and it would be bitty and difficult to get your teeth into.
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