{"id":607264,"date":"2026-05-27T20:59:23","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T20:59:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/607264\/"},"modified":"2026-05-27T20:59:23","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T20:59:23","slug":"elena-rybakina-second-seed-crashes-out-in-biggest-upset-of-french-open","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/607264\/","title":{"rendered":"Elena Rybakina: Second seed crashes out in biggest upset of French Open"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Elena Rybakina<\/a> crashed out of the French Open<\/a> as the second seed fell to a three-set defeat to Ukraine\u2019s Yuliia Starodubtseva in the biggest upset of the tournament so far. <\/p>\n

Rybakina, the Australian Open champion<\/a>, looked on course for the third round when she won the opening set but Starodubtseva turned the match around in what became a lengthy battle in gruelingly hot conditions. <\/p>\n

The world No 55 built on a one-sided second set to earn a double-break in the third, but Rybakina responded to force the deciding match tiebreak. <\/p>\n

Starodubtseva, however, immediately took charge of the tiebreak to convincingly close out a 3-6 6-1 7-6 (10-4) victory, claiming the biggest win of her career and first top-10 victory. <\/p>\n

\"Ukraine'sUkraine’s Yuliia Starodubtseva claimed the biggest win of her career (Reuters)<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard to describe, I’m super happy,\u201d Starodubtseva, 26, said in her on-court interview. \u201cElena is one of the top players. She has had an incredible year and I’m super proud of myself that I was able to do this today. It was a hard third set, but got it done.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe’s again one of the top players, and you, you can’t be thinking that it’s going to be easy today. Even at 3-0 [in the third set], I had a feeling it might not be that easy. Tough match, but happy to be the winner today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rybakina could have replaced Aryna Sabalenka<\/a> as world No 1 depending on their performances in Paris but is still yet to progress past the quarter-finals at Roland Garros in eight attempts. <\/p>\n

The former Wimbledon champion had won a clay-court title this year, however, triumphing in Stuttgart, and her early exit removes a potential obstacle from four-time champion Iga Swiatek<\/a>\u2019s side of the draw. <\/p>\n

\"YuliiaYuliia Starodubtseva and Elena Rybakina shake hands after their second round match (Reuters)<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Starodubtseva equals the best result of her career by reaching the third round of the French Open for a second consecutive year. <\/p>\n

She is the third player from Ukraine into the third round of the women\u2019s singles draw at Roland Garros, following seventh seed and Italian Open champion Elina Svitolina<\/a> and 15th seed and Madrid Open champion Marta Kostyuk<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think clay is not the worst surface for me,\u201d Starodubtseva said. \u201cAnd the crowd was very, very nice today to me. Thank you guys. I really, really felt the support today. I heard my name so many times and I really appreciate it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":607265,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-607264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=607264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607264\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/607265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=607264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=607264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=607264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}