Elena Rybakina didn’t leave the court until nearly midnight Friday in Stuttgart after her thrilling quarterfinal win over Leylah Fernandez. If there was any lingering fatigue from that grueling three-hour affair, she didn’t show it Saturday.<\/p>\n
Stuttgart:\u00a0Scores<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Draws<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Order of play<\/a><\/p>\n Returning for her semifinal against Mirra Andreeva, Rybakina played as if the previous night’s dramatics were a distant memory. She looked sharp from the start and closed out a 7-5, 6-1 victory in 1 hour and 17 minutes over the 18-year-old to reach her second Porsche Tennis Grand Prix final. The 2024 champion will face Karolina Muchova, who defeated Elina Svitolina in three sets earlier Saturday to advance to Sunday’s final. It marks Rybakina’s third final of 2026.<\/p>\n “First set, we were going pretty even,” Rybakina said in her on-court interview. “I had some opportunities to go up but didn’t take them. But I’m happy that in these important moments, my serve worked and I stayed aggressive. Then in the second set being up, I was more free to hit, to step in, to play even more aggressive. So I’m pretty happy with the performance. It was really solid.”<\/p>\n The match unfolded as a tale of two sets. The fireworks began on the opening point, when Andreeva cracked a forehand return winner off Rybakina’s first serve, setting the tone for a tightly contested opening set.<\/p>\n After failing to convert earlier chances, Rybakina made the first move when she broke for 4-2, only for Andreeva to break right back. Determined to avoid another slow start after repeatedly coming from behind against Fernandez, Rybakina held at love for 6-5 and then snatched the first set with another break.<\/p>\n That proved to be the turning point. Rybakina rode the momentum into a dominant second set, firing an ace to hold for 1-0 before grinding through a rollercoaster, five-deuce game to break for 2-0 on her fourth time of asking.<\/p>\n Moments later, Andreeva was staring at a 5-0 deficit.<\/p>\n The teenager managed a love hold to avoid the bagel, but it was far too little, far too late. Rybakina closed with a love hold of her own to end Andreeva’s undefeated start to the clay season, capping a performance that saw her finish with 23 winners to 18 unforced errors and a healthy 83% of first-serve points won.<\/p>\n The win keeps her bid for a second Stuttgart trophy alive and with it, the tournament’s signature bonus: a brand-new Porsche.<\/p>\n “That’s great motivation right on the court,” Rybakina said. “Whenever you are not focused or maybe frustrated, you just need to look at the cars, set the goal and try to do your best. So we’ll see what’s going to happen.”<\/p>\n She confirmed she has room in the garage.<\/p>\n First, though, she’ll have to get through Muchova, who holds a slight 2-1 edge in their head-to-head. Muchova also won their most recent meeting in three sets earlier this year in Brisbane. This will be their first matchup on clay and their first in a final.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Elena Rybakina didn’t leave the court until nearly midnight Friday in Stuttgart after her thrilling quarterfinal win over…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":613002,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[49,48,82,5452],"class_list":{"0":"post-613001","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-text"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613001","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=613001"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613001\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/613002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=613001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=613001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=613001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}