Rybakina’s ascension to the top of the rankings \u2013 the first Kazakhstani man or woman to do so \u2013 will rightly dominate the headlines.<\/p>\n
She has achieved one of her two goals for the tournament and is now just two wins away from a second major title of the season, having won the Australian Open in January.<\/p>\n
However, beaten opponent Zheng’s achievements should not go unnoticed, offering a welcome reminder of her talent with an entertaining run to the last eight.<\/p>\n
Having dropped out of the top 100 following elbow surgery in July 2025, the reigning Olympic champion navigated three qualifying rounds before registering her first Grand Slam main-draw win since last year’s French Open.<\/p>\n
She later stunned 22nd seed Madison Keys, who she trailed 5-0 in the third set and saved match point, and eighth seed Iga Swiatek to reach her third quarter-final in New York.<\/p>\n
Ranked 121st heading into the tournament, she is now up to 52nd in the live rankings and has just 65 points to defend for the remainder of the season.<\/p>\n
But for all the positives, there is an unshakable sense of what might have been against Rybakina.<\/p>\n
Momentum was with the 23-year-old after she broke late in the first set before staving off five break points to take a 1-0 lead. However, she was completely blown away in the second set, with her second serve coming under considerable pressure.<\/p>\n
She earned a break point in the eighth game of the decider but missed a routine backhand pass. In the next game, she brilliantly fought back from 0-40 to deuce but then followed a loose backhand with a double fault as her hopes of a maiden US Open semi-final slipped away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rybakina’s ascension to the top of the rankings \u2013 the first Kazakhstani man or woman to do so…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":619776,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-619775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=619775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619775\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/619776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=619775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=619775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=619775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}