{"id":344719,"date":"2025-12-14T13:19:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-14T13:19:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/344719\/"},"modified":"2025-12-14T13:19:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-14T13:19:08","slug":"former-world-no-1-sends-australian-open-warning-to-sabalenka-swiatek-gauff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/344719\/","title":{"rendered":"Former world No 1 sends Australian Open warning to Sabalenka, Swiatek &#038; Gauff"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Former doubles world No 1 Rennae Stubbs has identified Elena Rybakina as a player that nobody will want to face at the 2026 Australian Open.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.tennis365.com\/tag\/elena-rybakina\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Rybakina<\/a> finished the 2025 season as the world No 5 after she compiled an impressive 59-19 (75.6%) record.<\/p>\n<p>The Russian-born Kazakh ended her year on a massive high as she won the WTA Finals in Riyadh \u2014 where she won all five of her matches during a stunning run.\u00a0She defeated Aryna Sabalenka, Iga Swiatek and Amanda Anisimova \u2014 three of the top four players in the WTA Rankings \u2014 in Riyadh.<\/p>\n<p>The 26-year-old also secured WTA 500 titles in Strasbourg and Ningbo this season.<\/p>\n<p>Rybakina has won 11 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tennis365.com\/wta-tour\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">WTA Tour<\/a> singles titles, with her biggest title coming at Wimbledon in 2022.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking on an episode of the Rennae Stubbs Tennis Podcast, Stubbs backed Rybakina to be \u201cin the mix\u201d for the Australian Open title in January.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRybakina has had a little bit of an up and down year, but I think, look out for her in Australia,\u201d said the six-time Grand Slam doubles champion.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe smoked Sabalenka a couple of years ago in Brisbane and then came down and decided to play Adelaide and re-tweaked a bit of an Achilles issue and went and lost in an epic tiebreak to [Anna] Blinkova a couple of years ago.<\/p>\n<p>Tennis News<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.tennis365.com\/tennis-news\/elena-rybakina-calmed-down-stefano-vukov-returned-coach\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Elena Rybakina \u2018calmed down\u2019 after Stefano Vukov returned as coach<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.tennis365.com\/tennis-news\/emma-raducanu-uniqlo-nike-sponsor-move-report\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Emma Raducanu will mirror Roger Federer with a major sponsor change: report<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think that\u2019s when she should have won the Australian Open after what she did to Sabalenka the week before, but she will be there and knocking on the door big time. And no player wants to play her. No player.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe does not have a ton of weaknesses, massive serve. She has the biggest and best serve in women\u2019s tennis, probably. One of the best backhands I have ever seen. So she will definitely be in the mix at the Australian Open.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>What is Elena Rybakina\u2019s record at the Australian Open?<\/p>\n<p>Rybakina holds a 14-6 (70%) record from her six previous main draw appearances at the Australian Open.<\/p>\n<p>This makes the Australian Open Rybakina\u2019s third-best major for win rate behind Wimbledon (84%) and Roland Garros (73%).<\/p>\n<p>The Kazakh was a runner-up at the Australian Open in 2023, when she lost to Aryna Sabalenka in the final.<\/p>\n<p>Rybakina reached the last 16 in Melbourne in 2025, falling to eventual champion Madison Keys.<\/p>\n<p>She fell in the third round in 2020 and the second round in 2021, 2022 and 2024.<\/p>\n<p>READ NEXT: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tennis365.com\/tennis-news\/ben-shelton-nick-kyrgios-aryna-sabalenka-battle-of-the-sexes-tough\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Sabalenka &amp; Kyrgios \u2018Battle of the Sexes\u2019 sparks \u2018tough\u2019 comment from Ben Shelton<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former doubles world No 1 Rennae Stubbs has identified Elena Rybakina as a player that nobody will want&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":344720,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-344719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344719","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=344719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344719\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/344720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}