Elena Rybakina’s slump at Wimbledon described as ‘strange’ by former Grand Slam finalist
Elena Rybakina was many people’s favourite to win this year’s Wimbledon title, but she failed to make it to the second week and former world No 11 Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova was left scratching her head.
The Kazakh star made an excellent start to the 2026 season as she won the Australian Open, beating Aryna Sabalenka in the final, and followed it up with an excellent Sunshine Double before winning the Stuttgart Open in April.
Those results helped her to close the gap to Sabalenka at No 1 in the WTA Rankings and she had an opportunity to overtake her great rival with a deep run at the French Open, but suffered a shock second-round defeat to Yuliia Starodubtseva.
With Sabalenka losing in the quarter-final at Roland Garros, Rybakina had a second bite at the cherry at Wimbledon, but she again failed to make the most of it as she was stunned in the third round by Elise Mertens.
2021 French Open runner-up Pavlyuchenkova admits she was left confused by the two-time Grand Slam winner’s performance at Wimbledon.
“I’m very disappointed that Rybakina loses relatively early in Slams, because she’s world No 2 and she has a real chance to become No 1 for the first time, the gap is small,” the Russian – who reached the quarter-final at Wimbledon in 2016 and 2025 – told Tennis Bolshe.
“Maybe that also puts pressure on her, because I think at Roland Garros all she needed was to win a couple of matches, and she couldn’t. Maybe clay isn’t her surface, but grass – that was strange.”
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But all is once again not lost for Rybakina in terms of the No 1 battle with Sabalenka as the Belarusian lost in the quarter-final at the grass-court Grand Slam.
It means the gap between the two are just 407 points ahead of the North American swing and Sabalenka has 2215 points to defend in the next two months as she is the defending champion at the US Open (2,000 points) and also reached the quarter-final of the Cincinnati Open last year.
Rybakina, meanwhile, has 1,215 points to defend as she will drop 195 points at next week’s Washington Open as she has opted not to play. She also reached the semi-final of the Canadian Open and Cincinnati Open last year and lost in the round of 16 at the US Open.
But on the flip side, the 27-year-old is yet to make it past the fourth round of the season-ending hard-court Grand Slam.
Her road to No 1 will also get more complicated later in the year as she has 1,500 points to defend at the season-ending WTA Finals after winning the tournament undefeated last year.
