After dominating a subject of her most harmful friends, and claiming $5.2 million—the largest purse within the historical past of professional tennis, males’s or girls’s—Elena Rybakina held up the champ’s trophy on the WTA Finals. It was the primary time she had gained that title.
Rybakina barely certified for this year-end occasion for the season’s prime gamers, attributable to a murky begin to 2025. However at her finest, her tennis is highly effective, lucid, and economical. She controls factors begin to end, would not run greater than she has to, and appears luxuriously unhurried. That was the type of tennis she introduced towards world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka in Saturday’s last, which she gained, 6-3, 7-6(0). True to kind, Rybakina was a imaginative and prescient of chilly restraint in victory, holding her trophy up on the purple indoor arduous court docket in Riyadh. It was a depressingly apt scene for our occasions: a triumph of ladies’s athletic brilliance, sponsored by Saudi generosity.
As astonishing as her tennis had been, Rybakina invited much more consideration together with her conduct after the victory. When invited to pose for a bog-standard post-tournament photograph alongside Sabalenka and WTA chief government Portia Archer, Rybakina refused. She stood to the facet, made a hand gesture, and seemed away whereas the photograph was taken. Her defiance of regular protocol produced this mystifying picture of a CEO standing solely with the runner-up, on the capstone occasion of the tour that she runs:
It was not tough to suss out the reasoning behind Rybakina’s snub. The WTA had investigated her coach Stefano Vukov, then banned him for one 12 months, beginning on the finish of January 2025. It was Archer who wrote to the coach asserting the tour’s determination, and in that letter, which was obtained by The Athletic, she stated the tour decided that Vukov had engaged in “abuse of authority” and “bodily and verbal abuse.”
Even wanting solely at his conduct throughout matches, Vukov was recognized for an aggressive, antagonistic fashion of teaching. The tour’s investigation delved into his off-court conduct as properly. Archer’s letter cited a couple of examples of conduct that violated the tour’s code of conduct: calling Rybakina “silly” and “retarded,” making her cry, pushing her past her bodily limits, and overwhelming her with texts and calls throughout a quick pause of their teaching partnership.
“It’s clear to me you’ve gotten a poisonous relationship,” Archer wrote within the letter, which acknowledged proof of a romantic relationship between participant and coach. Vukov was fired by Rybakina in August 2024, earlier than he signed again on firstly of 2025, and continued teaching her all through the season—regardless that beneath the principles of the ban, he wasn’t even allowed into stadiums or follow courts. After Vukov appealed the ban and entered non-public arbitration with the tour, it was lifted in August.
Rybakina surged within the final two months of the season and narrowly certified for the WTA Finals, which solely lets within the season’s prime eight performers. Having simply made the minimize, she went undefeated in group play and the elimination rounds, beating 4 of the highest 5 gamers on the earth. I used to be particularly awestruck by her efficiency within the last. In 2025, a season the place Sabalenka reigned supreme over the sector, Rybakina nonetheless gained two of their three matchups and held quadruple match-point within the third. Although she struggles with consistency, Rybakina’s peak stage, fueled by the purity of her ball-striking and spot serving, is about as excessive as tennis permits.
On the press convention after Saturday’s last, Rybakina was requested about snubbing Archer, and declined to remark. When requested later if she had reconciled with the tour after the Vukov investigation, she had this reply: “Effectively, I feel we’re all doing our job, and we had the chance to have conversations, however ultimately, they by no means occurred.”
Rybakina is understood for the minimal viable quantity of engagement with press, even for innocuous questions. This particular matter was unlikely to attract far more of a forthcoming response. Former participant and present coach Pam Shriver, who was one thing of a public whistleblower on Vukov two years in the past, has remained brazenly essential of him ever since. Having instructed her personal story of abuse by a coach, Shriver has constantly known as for extra safeguards towards inappropriate coach-player relationships. After Saturday’s snub, she was unimpressed by Rybakina’s perspective towards the tour. “Think about successful extra prize cash in a single match than your entire Authentic 9 over their collective careers, then dissing WTA CEO as a result of the CEO has tried to make sure stronger safeguards in your sports activities… it’s arduous to think about,” Shriver wrote.
Rybakina is now in a curious place. She stays one of the gifted gamers within the sport, with loads of years of her prime forward of her. She is a 26-year-old free to make use of the coach of her selecting, and she or he has chosen to proceed using a coach that the tour has sanctioned for abusive conduct towards her. Generally, Rybakina occupies a spot of indifference towards the trimmings of professional tennis, even whereas excelling at it, and on this case, she appears unmoved by the moral issues of its management. At its signature occasion, the WTA topped a champion who works with a coach that was discovered by the WTA to have abused her; she was paid her prize cash by the sovereign wealth fund of a rustic the place girls may solely just lately drive automobiles.
