Elena Rybakina hits out at WTA leadership – ‘It’s a little bit weak’
The WTA has come under fire following the unfortunate end to the Canadian Open with Elena Rybakina describing the leadership as “weak”.
The weather caused havoc in Montreal and several matches were affected and some players were always going to draw the short end of the stick in terms of scheduling.
One of those players was Rybakina as her quarter-final match against Daria Kasatkina finished at 02:55 local time on Saturday morning with the match lasting three hours and 27 minutes.
More rain on Saturday afternoon meant her semi-final against Liudmila Samsonova was then pushed back to Sunday – the day usually reserved for the final. Rybakina started the last-four encounter well as she won the opening set 6-1, but the exertions of the week finally took its toll and she went down 6-1, 1-6, 2-6 against the 15th seed.
The 2022 Wimbledon champion was left unimpressed by events in Montreal and she made her feelings known during the post-match press conference.
“Definitely I feel destroyed just because of the scheduling and the whole situation. I’m not really happy about it, but yeah, it is what it is,” the 2022 Wimbledon champion said.
“Unfortunately, players cannot do much in these situations. The decision is not really ours. Weather was not helpful. So I picked up some injuries I would say, but we tried to manage it and see how we will go from that.”
READ MORE: Elena Rybakina ‘destroyed’ after winning Montreal epic at 2:55 am
She added: “It’s the first time when the match went I think that long, and we finished also so late.
“It’s the first time and hopefully the last time because I think it’s been a little bit unprofessional from the – I cannot say really the tournament because I think that the most important is the WTA here. Leadership a little bit weak for now, but hopefully something is going to change because this year it was many situations which I cannot really understand.”
Rybakina admitted that she didn’t have enough time to recover after her win over Kasatkina as she struggled to adapt afterwards.
“We finished at 3, I showered, did some stretching a little bit, went back to the hotel,” she explained.
“I think I fell asleep at 5. I woke up at 10, and then it was impossible to sleep. So, yeah, it definitely was not enough time to recover.”
It is back-to-back WTA 1000 events with the Cincinnati Open already underway in Ohio, but Rybakina admits she is not too sure if she will play this week as the US Open is just around the corner.
“The worst thing is that it’s not about this tournament. It’s going to be not easy to recover for the next two weeks,” she lamented.
