RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — While the first six singles qualifiers for the WTA Finals were basking in the glory of more than a week off, Elena Rybakina was grinding in Ningbo, China.<\/p>\n
Playing with a sense of urgency and absolutely no margin for error, she won all four of her matches there, the title and a crucial 500 ranking points. Then she jumped on a plane and flew 1,000-plus miles to Tokyo, Japan. Rybakina won her first match, then saved a set point and defeated Victoria Mboko in the quarterfinals. That guaranteed her spot at the year-end championships for the third straight season.<\/p>\n
Last Friday, after a debilitating 5,000-mile flight to Riyadh, Rybakina met the press. After four events and 11 matches in a span of 29 days, she sounded weary.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt wasn\u2019t an easy trip, that\u2019s for sure,\u201d Rybakina said. \u201cA bit of jet lag. I had couple days off. I would say, of course, not the freshest, but I think when the competition starts, it doesn\u2019t matter, you try to do your best.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, we will see what\u2019s going to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
What\u2019s happening, oddly enough, is Rybakina. With impressive wins over No. 2-seeded Iga Swiatek and No. 4 Amanda Anisimova, Rybakina — the last to qualify for the WTA Finals, became the first to advance to the semifinals.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s not as incongruous as it might initially seem. Actually, the two are intimately connected by a single word: momentum.<\/p>\n
The winning streak was up to eight before the 2022 Wimbledon champion played a Wednesday match against Ekaterina Alexandrova that had no qualifying implications.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been a strangely uneven season for the 26-year-old who represents Kazakhstan. This was the first time in four years she didn\u2019t reach a Grand Slam or WTA 1000 event final. On the other hand, she\u2019s the only woman this year to accumulate double-digit match-wins at the Grand Slams, WTA 1000s and WTA 500s.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a lot of ups and downs throughout the year,\u201d Rybakina said, \u201cbut we were trying to improve, even if it\u2019s end of the season. I\u2019m sure if I do well this week, it\u2019s going to be great.\u201d<\/p>\n
Riding the wave<\/p>\n
Although you can\u2019t see it, momentum is a fundamental concept in physics. The formula:<\/p>\n
p = m \u00d7 v<\/p>\n
Momentum (p) is the product of an object\u2019s mass (m) and its velocity (v). The number helps us understand how objects move and interact with each other, especially in scenarios featuring collisions, explosions and other dynamic interactions.<\/p>\n
With this late-season surge, Rybakina consistently has been getting the better of her colleagues in a series of dynamic interactions. She\u2019s peaking at precisely the right time. They say that life is all about timing. It\u2019s similar to teams that idle along through the regular season, barely make the playoffs — then catch fire and go on to win the title.<\/p>\n
After losing to Marketa Vondrousova in the fourth round of the US Open, Rybakina found herself last in a three-player race for the last two qualifying spots. Mirra Andreeva, the teenager who won back-to-back WTA 1000s in Dubai and Indian Wells, was in the best shape, ahead of Jasmine Paolini and Rybakina.<\/p>\n
After indifferent results in Beijing and Wuhan, Rybakina came to Ningbo as the No. 3 seed — behind No. 1 Andreeva and No. 2 Paolini. But Andreeva lost to Zhu Lin in her first match and Rybakina dropped a 6-3, 6-2 decision on Paolini in the semifinals.<\/p>\n
When Andreeva reportedly couldn\u2019t secure a visa in time to play Tokyo, Paolini qualified and Rybakina won those two matches to join her in Riyadh.<\/p>\n
Last year, Coco Gauff won nine of 10 matches in Beijing and Wuhan, then took the title in Riyadh by winning four of five, including a spectacular final over Zheng Qinwen.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Three years ago in Fort Worth, Caroline Garcia rode a hot streak to the WTA Finals championship match, where she bested Aryna Sabalenka. Garcia was ranked No. 35 going into Cincinnati but rallied to qualify and, eventually, won the title. A run to the US Open semifinals gave her 13 wins in 14 matches, the streak that eventually landed her in Texas.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Another way to define momentum — confidence.<\/p>\n
In 2016, Angelique Kerber rode that wave for nearly the entire season. After reaching the final in Brisbane, she won the Australian Open. Later, she got to the Wimbledon final, took the title in Cincinnati, reached the gold-medal match in Rio de Janeiro and won the US Open.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s tough to explain the feeling in words,\u201d said Kerber on Tuesday, sitting in Riyadh\u2019s player lounge. \u201cYou have that momentum and you try to take it as long as possible. You are staying in the moment. You are in such a zone. There\u2019s no Plan B, and in your mind, there\u2019s no chance that you lose a match.<\/p>\n
\u201cRybakina, she\u2019s got nothing to lose. We know that when she\u2019s hitting the ball good, she serves well, there\u2019s not a lot of players that can beat her. So the momentum is now, she\u2019s into the semis, let\u2019s see what she can do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Confidence is contagious<\/p>\n
After a straight-sets win over Anisimova, Rybakina encountered a stubborn Swiatek in her second round-robin match. She had lost all four of this year\u2019s matches to the 24-year-old from Poland (and eight of nine sets) and seemed out of sorts. Swiatek went on to win the first set.<\/p>\n
And then Rybakina won 12 of the next 13 games.<\/p>\n
\u201cVery pleased with my serve, and I think the return also got better throughout the match,\u201d Rybakina said afterward. \u201cDefinitely the serve is a big advantage for me, and whenever it works, I have chances to win against anyone.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo hopefully I can continue like this, since it\u2019s my big weapon in the game.\u201d<\/p>\n
The serve is Rybakina\u2019s signature stroke. She leads all Hologic WTA Tour players with 480 — more than 100 ahead of Linda Noskova — which works out to 6.5 per match. And this indoor venue amplifies that shot.<\/p>\n
Going forward, she\u2019ll need it. In two previous appearances at the WTA Finals, Rybakina (2-4) never advanced past the group stage. This one feels different.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I came to Asia, I knew of course there is still a lot of players who can qualify,\u201d Rybakina said. \u201cI tried to do my best. I played against tough opponents, the ones I lost before. I\u2019m pretty glad that last few weeks went successful for me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ons Jabeur knows what she\u2019s feeling. In 2022, she got hot on the spring clay, reaching the Charleston final, winning the title in Madrid and making another final in Rome. After winning the title on the grass in Berlin, Jabeur\u2019s 11th\u00a0straight match-win delivered her to the final — where she lost in three sets to Rybakina.<\/p>\n
\u201cWinning gives you confidence, with confidence you dare to do more things on the court,\u201d Jabeur explained. \u201cI have great memories from 2022. Yes, I was feeling so tired, but I was enjoying being tired.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jabeur, who said she hasn\u2019t picked up a racquet in the four months since Wimbledon, is taking a break from tennis but hopes to return. She\u2019s been closely following Rybakina\u2019s run in Riyadh.<\/p>\n
\u201cUsually, the one who plays good at the end of the season plays better at the WTA Finals,\u201d Jabeur said. \u201cI\u2019ve seen the results before, and that\u2019s how it happens. I\u2019m sure she\u2019s confident and I think she likes to play here on these courts.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cSo there\u2019s a pretty good chance that she could win here.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — While the first six singles qualifiers for the WTA Finals were basking in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":263504,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593,5452],"class_list":{"0":"post-263503","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-tennis","12":"tag-text"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263503"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263503\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/263504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}