Oct 26 (Reuters) \u2013 A year after winning the Ningbo Open transformed Elena Rybakina\u2019s season, the world number one returned to the Chinese city and retained her title \u200bon Sunday, as her game clicked into gear \u200cbefore another tilt at the WTA Finals.<\/p>\n
Her 2025 success proved the springboard for a stellar run as she secured the last spot in the eight-player WTA Finals field the following week, before winning the season finale \u200cand \u200bcarrying that momentum into the current \u2060campaign.<\/p>\n
The 27-year-old Kazakh went \u2060on to capture the Australian Open title in January before claiming her third Grand Slam crown at the US Open last month.<\/p>\n
Rybakina\u2019s 6-2 6-2 win over Leylah Fernandez in \u200bthe Ningbo final on Sunday came after she had suffered defeat in her first match as world number one \u2060in Beijing and an injury-enforced absence \u2060from Wuhan.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the first time I\u2019ve defended a \u200btitle, so it\u2019s a great achievement,\u201d Rybakina told the WTA website.<\/p>\n
\u201cNingbo \u200bis already a special place. Last year I started \u200cto play really well from this tournament. Hopefully it\u2019s going to give me motivation and good energy to continue this season and start the next one.\u201d<\/p>\n
After losing nine of her \u2060first 13 finals, Rybakina has now won 11 of her last 15.<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember I was getting upset always losing in finals,\u201d she \u2060said after winning \u200cher fourth title of the year and 15th \u2060overall.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow it\u2019s going my way, but I \u200bcan\u2019t expect \u200cit all the time \u2026 now it\u2019s experience \u200bclicking in \u2060important moments.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rybakina plays in the Pan Pacific Open in Tokyo this week before heading to Indian Wells for the November 8-15 WTA Finals, where she went unbeaten last year to pocket over $5 million in prize money.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Shrivathsa Sridhar in Bengaluru; Editing \u200bby Peter Rutherford)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oct 26 (Reuters) \u2013 A year after winning the Ningbo Open transformed Elena Rybakina\u2019s season, the world number…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":946593,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-946592","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\/946592","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=946592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/946592\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/946593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=946592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=946592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=946592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}