The Elena Rybakina era has officially arrived in women’s tennis

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - SEPTEMBER 12: Elena Rybakina of Kazakhstan celebrates match point against Aryna Sabalenka in their Women's Singles Final match on Day Fourteen of the 2026 US Open at USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center on September 12, 2026 in the Flushing neighborhood of the Queens borough of New York City. | Getty Images You can sometimes feel paradigm shifts in tennis. It isn’t always about rankings — there’s this indescribable understanding, this palpable thing when a player enters or exits the top tier of their sport; you really do just know it when you see it. And Elena Rybakina is officially in that top tier. Actually, she is the top tier. Rybakina won her first US Open on Saturday over Aryna Sabalenka and is now a French Open away from the career Grand Slam. But her ascent to the tippy top of her game feels even more notable. Much like Jannik Sinner’s rise from being very good from 2019 to 2022 to being the best by 2024, Rybakina hasn’t changed one thing or made some dramatic shift in her approach; she’s just committed to relentlessly refining her abilities year over year to minimize her weaknesses and maximize her impact. Rybakina has succeeded in that effort, and now stands atop women’s tennis. She came into the tournament with questions surrounding an ankle injury that forced her to withdraw from Toronto, but looked completely healthy throughout her tournament and didn’t ever feel at serious risk of losing a match. Her win over Naomi Osaka was particularly jarring, and forced me to start thinking about if she was simply the best player in the world already. Rybakina had already secured the number one ranking going into the final and would have emerged with it even if she lost; it was a shame for entertainment value that the match did not also decide the number one ranking, but Rybakina punctuated it nonetheless. The number one ranking is arguably more prestigious than any individual Grand Slam, given it is achieved through months and years of effort and is a testament to the grind of the WTA tour. The list of women who have won a Grand Slam is not long, but it’s longer than the list of those who have reached number one. That really is the peak of achievement. The final also saw a slightly tasteless but ultimately overblown moment as Sabalenka first dropped and then smashed her racquet after losing. Tennis is big on the kind of post-point, post-match civility that I have never been able to take seriously, and there is no need (in my opinion) for players to play down how they are feeling. Anyone who has ever played tennis knows the overpowering desire to take out your anger on your clearly to-blame and evidently breakable racquet. These are some of the most competitive people on earth, a necessary quality for those who can become champions. Expecting them to be immediately gracious in defeat is artificial — forcing runners-up to participate in the trophy ceremony and to speak is an absurd anachronism, one I’d like to see eliminated from the sport. Looking back on the US Open, what’s next for the women’s game? 2025 and 2026 saw the emergence of a top 10 that was pretty well above the rest of the field, though within that top 10 there appeared to be a rather high level of parity. Coming into the US Open, the women’s tour had seen seven consecutive different Grand Slam champions, with Rybakina finally breaking that streak with her second Slam this year. Whether this is an age of parity for the women’s game or merely a larger-than-normal top group depends on your definition of parity. The single best match of the tournament, in my view, though I obviously could not watch every single match, was probably Iva Jovic versus Alex Eala, representing a potential future path for women’s tennis as a young generation makes its name. Both still have a long way to go, and Jovic found out just how much the difference was between her current level and what Coco Gauff is capable of. Nevertheless, it was an exciting development, and hopefully emblematic of the future. This tournament could represent the real beginning of the Rybakina era, though I’d lean more towards continued parity and a variety of Grand Slam winners. The hardcourt competition is fierce, and plenty of players more comfortable on clay and grass will aim at the middle two tournaments for years to come. In any case, I very much enjoyed the 2026 US Open.

Read it at SB Nation ↗

← Front page