Aryna Sabalenka and Elena Rybakina will finish the Grand Slam season the way it started.<\/p>\n
The top two women in the world rankings meet Saturday in the U.S. Open final, where Sabalenka will try to become the first player to win three in a row since Serena Williams from 2012-14.<\/p>\n
Even if she does, Rybakina will pass her on Monday and become No. 1 in the WTA rankings. Sabalenka has held the top spot for 99 consecutive weeks, but Rybakina gained enough points to unseat her by reaching the semifinals in Flushing Meadows.<\/p>\n
Rybakina got a start on cutting into the deficit by beating Sabalenka in the Australian Open final. The rematch Saturday makes this just the second time since the Australian Open became a hard-court event in 1988 that the same women will play in the finals of both tournaments. Stefanie Graf and Arantxa Sanchez Vicario did it in 1994.<\/p>\n
Rybakina also has won a Wimbledon title and is playing for her first U.S. Open trophy. To get it, she has to stop Sabalenka’s 19-match winning streak at Flushing Meadows, where she hasn’t lost since Coco Gauff beat her in the 2023 final.<\/p>\n
Sabalenka won the two other meetings this season \u2014 both on hard courts \u2014 in Indian Wells and Miami. She leads their rivalry 10-7.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aryna Sabalenka and Elena Rybakina will finish the Grand Slam season the way it started. The top two…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":345101,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[25,118,9,24,12,63,122,124,123,319,15547,27],"class_list":["post-345100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-app-top-stories","tag-associated-press","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-news","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=345100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345100\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/345101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=345100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=345100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=345100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}