NEW YORK, Sept \u206011 (Reuters) – Elena Rybakina said she will not put extra pressure on herself before \u2060Saturday’s U.S. Open final against Aryna Sabalenka, with the second seed viewing \u200cthe showdown as another chance to test herself against a rival who pushes her to the limit.<\/p>\n
Rybakina rallied to beat Coco Gauff 3-6 6-4 6-4 in a thrilling semi-final on Thursday to earn a title clash \u200bwith defending champion Sabalenka and take a step towards \u2060her third Grand Slam crown.<\/p>\n
The pair \u2060have played two previous Grand Slam finals, with Belarusian Sabalenka defeating Rybakina in the 2023 \u2060Australian \u200cOpen decider before the Kazakh levelled the score at Melbourne Park in January.<\/p>\n
“It’s an important match, and since it’s a final, I feel like it doesn’t \u2060matter who’s on the other side,” said Rybakina, who will \u200btake over as world \u200cnumber one from Sabalenka on Monday.<\/p>\n
“I don’t want to put too much pressure \u2060on myself, because \u200bwe’re very close in the rankings. Even if something goes wrong in the final, I’ll still have other opportunities and other tournaments until the end of the year.<\/p>\n
“We push each other when \u2060we play these matches, and you can clearly see \u200bon what you need to work more. I think that’s great that you play against someone who pushes you to the limit.”<\/p>\n
Rybakina credited her team for helping her maintain her \u2060strong form this season after her Australian Open triumph.<\/p>\n
“It definitely helps. There’s been a lot going on in the previous year outside of the court,” the 27-year-old said.<\/p>\n
“I think now all of my focus is on tennis. I can’t always perform at my best, \u200bthere’s always ups and downs, but I think we’ve been \u2060doing a very good job, right decisions in certain situations, because every day is a challenge.<\/p>\n
“I’m \u200bnot getting younger, and physically always some things come \u200cup. So just all things put together \u200band also experience for the past years on tour have led to these kinds of results.”<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Shrivathsa Sridhar in New York; Editing by Peter Rutherford)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK, Sept \u206011 (Reuters) – Elena Rybakina said she will not put extra pressure on herself before…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":887835,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,6675,85,747],"class_list":["post-887834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-na","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/887834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=887834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/887834\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/887835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=887834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=887834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=887834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}