A year after winning the Ningbo Open transformed Elena Rybakina’s season, \u2060the world number one returned to the Chinese city and retained her title on Sunday, as \u200cher game clicked into gear before another tilt at the \u200cWTA Finals.<\/p>\n
Her 2025 success proved the springboard for \u200ca stellar run as she secured the last spot \u200cin the eight-player WTA Finals field the following \u200cweek, before winning the season finale and carrying that momentum into the current campaign.<\/p>\n
The 27-year-old Kazakh went on to \u200ccapture the Australian Open title in \u2060January before claiming her \u200cthird Grand Slam crown at the US Open last month.<\/p>\n
Rybakina<\/a>‘s \u200b6-2, 6-2<\/a> win over Leylah Fernandez<\/a> in the Ningbo final on Sunday came after \u200bshe had suffered defeat in her first match as world number one in Beijing and an injury-enforced \u2060absence from Wuhan.<\/p>\n “It’s \u200bthe first time I’ve defended a title, so it’s a great achievement,” Rybakina told the WTA website.<\/p>\n “Ningbo is already a special place. Last year I started to \u200cplay really well from this tournament. Hopefully it’s going to give me motivation and good energy to continue this season and start the next one.”<\/p>\n After losing nine of her first 13 finals, Rybakina has now won 11 of her last 15.<\/p>\n “I remember I was getting upset always losing in finals,” she said after winning her fourth title of the \u200cyear and 15th overall.<\/p>\n “Now it’s going my way, \u200bbut I can’t expect it all the time … \u200cnow it’s experience clicking in important moments.”<\/p>\n Rybakina plays in the Pan Pacific Open in Tokyo this week before heading to Indian Wells for the November 8th to 15th WTA Finals, where she went unbeaten \u2060last year to \u2060pocket over $5 million in \u200cprize money.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A year after winning the Ningbo Open transformed Elena Rybakina’s season, \u2060the world number one returned to the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":814998,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-814997","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\/814997","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=814997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814997\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/814998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=814997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=814997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=814997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}