{"id":671328,"date":"2026-05-29T03:06:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T03:06:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/671328\/"},"modified":"2026-05-29T03:06:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T03:06:14","slug":"elena-rybakina-exits-french-open-as-yuliia-starodubtseva-earns-best-career-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/671328\/","title":{"rendered":"Elena Rybakina exits French Open as Yuliia Starodubtseva earns best career win"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Athletic has live coverage of the 2026 French Open.<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

PARIS \u2014 Elena Rybakina<\/a>, the world No. 2 and one of the favorites for the French Open<\/a> women\u2019s title, lost her second-round match on a blistering Tuesday afternoon at Roland Garros.<\/p>\n

Yuliia Starodubtseva, a 26-year-old from Ukraine who attended Old Dominion University in Virginia, registered the biggest win of her career.<\/p>\n

Starodubtseva, the world No. 55, took advantage of a string of errors from Rybakina\u2019s forehand and the Russian-born Kazakh\u2019s lingering discomfort on outdoor clay to come back from a set down to beat Rybakina 3-6, 6-1, 7-6(4).<\/p>\n

Rybakina staged a comeback midway through the third set, knotting the score at 4-4 from 3-0 down. But the errors took over again down the stretch, as Starodubtseva held her serve twice with her back against the wall and played a smart and steady tiebreak to cross the finish line, as Rybakina again struggled to keep the ball on the court.<\/p>\n

Starodubtseva, who had lost some of the conviction on her shots from 3-0 up, found it again in the most crucial moments, hitting winners and pinning Rybakina back during the 10-point tiebreak in ways that she could not find from 3-0 to 6-6.<\/p>\n

Rybakina\u2019s loss put an exclamation point on a massive afternoon for Iga \u015awi\u0105tek\u2019s chances of winning a fifth French Open title in seven years.<\/p>\n

\u015awi\u0105tek, the No. 3 seed, kicked off the day on Court Philippe-Chatrier with a solid 6-2, 6-3 win over Sara Bejlek of the Czech Republic to make the final 32. At that point, \u015awi\u0105tek still faced at least two major potential obstacles between her and the final.<\/p>\n

First, there was a potential third-round duel against Jelena Ostapenko. \u015awi\u0105tek is 0-6 against Ostapenko. Rybakina also loomed as a possible semifinal foe.<\/p>\n

About 90 minutes after \u015awi\u0105tek left the court, Ostapenko lost to Magda Linette 2-6, 6-2, 2-6. Soon after that, Rybakina, who won the opening set with ease, began to fall apart.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m just proud of myself,\u201d Starodubtseva said during her on-court interview. \u201cIt was a hard third set.\u201d<\/p>\n

Starodubtseva\u2019s win also wrapped a banner day for Ukraine. Marta Kostyuk and Elina Svitolina, who won the last two tournaments before the French Open, also advanced.<\/p>\n

Starodubtseva cracked open the tiebreak by lacing a crosscourt forehand right into the corner of the court. That stretched her lead to 7-3, putting her three points from her first top-10 win.<\/p>\n

Then, she kicked in a first serve, and its arcing trajectory handcuffed Rybakina on her backhand. Starodubtseva then curved a backhand of her own to break the sideline and send Rybakina almost into the crowd.<\/p>\n

The ball still came back, but Starodubtseva nailed a swinging backhand volley to get to match point.<\/p>\n

She could not convert the first, but on her second chance, Rybakina gave her and \u015awi\u0105tek the ending they wanted.<\/p>\n

Rybakina had her share of challenges on Wednesday. Her coach, Stefano Vukov, has been sick, she said in her news conference, and had to leave the court mid-match. She said she knew that was a possibility from the start. Vukov had missed her practice session earlier in the week.<\/p>\n

She also struggled to control the ball in the hot and dry conditions.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe ball bounces so high that you need to really force the wrist, you need to play with fast hands,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd today it was not enough from my side. So even when I was not really attacking the ball, I was trying to keep it in play. I had too many mistakes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, Rybakina has 71 unforced errors on the day.<\/p>\n

Starodubtseva said she expected Rybakina to fight her way back into the match. She tried not to think about having lost the lead when Rybakina drew even.<\/p>\n

\u201cBring yourself to think it\u2019s neutral,\u201d she said in her news conference. \u201cYou start from the beginning, it doesn\u2019t matter what just happened. Just kind of, like, okay, 0-0, 0-1. Let\u2019s just start again. Let\u2019s not think about the past and move on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Move on she did, the latest, and maybe most surprising, Ukrainian to roll into the final 32.<\/p>\n

\u201cit\u2019s really, really cool how it\u2019s like so many Ukrainians playing a final, winning a tournament,\u201d she said. \u201cLike you see Ukrainian on WTA Instagram every time. I find it really cool. It\u2019s inspiring.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Athletic has live coverage of the 2026 French Open.\u00a0 PARIS \u2014 Elena Rybakina, the world No. 2…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":671329,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":["post-671328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=671328"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671328\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/671329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=671328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=671328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=671328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}