Rybakina Defeats Sabalenka to Claim US Open Title
Aryna Sabalenka stopped hitting for a moment.
On a practice court at Flushing Meadows, already through to the semi-finals, she glanced across towards Arthur Ashe Stadium, catching the pictures on a nearby screen. Elena Rybakina was out there, marching through another match. Sabalenka’s face tightened, just briefly, before she turned back to the baseline and resumed training.
The threat had been coming for months. It finally arrived in New York.
A rivalry pushed to the summit
Rybakina’s climb to No. 1 did not start under the lights of Arthur Ashe. It began last season, when she closed 2025 by beating Sabalenka in the WTA Finals Riyadh championship match. Weeks later in Melbourne, she dug herself out of a 0-3 hole in the deciding set to stun Sabalenka again and take the Australian Open title.
The message was clear: Sabalenka had a rival who could not only live with her power, but outlast it.
By the time the tour hit North America this summer, the numbers started to catch up with the narrative. Rybakina, 27, reached the Montreal final and shoved herself right back into the race for the top ranking. Then her body rebelled. A left ankle and heel tendon problem in Cincinnati forced her to withdraw from the quarter-finals, the “chronic foot injury” casting real doubt over her US Open.
She waited until the last possible moment to confirm she would even play in New York.
Once she did, she barely looked back.
Rybakina did not drop a set in the opening week. Her demolition of Naomi Osaka in the round of 16 changed the tone of the tournament. Seven aces. Eighty-seven percent of points won behind her first serve. Osaka never got close to her rhythm; Rybakina simply hit through the court and through the noise.
Sabalenka saw it all unfolding.
Asked about the ranking stakes as Rybakina surged, the then world No. 1 tried to swat the storyline away.
“I completely separate myself from that, because it’s just guessing. It’s like if, if, if, if. I’m just trying to bring my best tennis every time I’m competing out there and basically fight for it,” she said after reaching the quarter-finals.
When the maths finally clicked and Rybakina officially became the new No. 1, Sabalenka’s response was sharper, almost a bark.
“I don’t care!”
She insisted the US Open trophy meant more than any number next to her name.
Rybakina takes New York
The draw gave Rybakina no easy path to that trophy. In the semi-finals, she faced Coco Gauff, a former US Open champion and the heartbeat of the home crowd. Gauff snatched the opening set, but Rybakina absorbed the hit and rolled over her in three, the reigning Australian Open winner simply raising her level when the match tightened.
Then came Sabalenka.
The Belarusian walked into Arthur Ashe Stadium as the favourite. She had not lost on that court in two years. Victory would have made her only the third woman in history to win the US Open three times in a row. This was supposed to be her house, her era, her statement.
Instead, the night belonged to the woman across the net.
Rybakina’s 6-4, 5-7, 6-2 win in 2 hours and 21 minutes was not a runaway, but it was authoritative. Playing her first US Open final, she broke Sabalenka for 3-2 in the opening set despite landing just 27% of her first serves. If the delivery misfired, the groundstrokes did not. She hammered the ball off both wings, turning defence into sudden attack and forcing Sabalenka to press.
The serve came back in the second set. Rybakina raised her first-serve percentage to 61%, held firm on her own delivery and carved out two break points. She could not convert them. Sabalenka, hanging on, saved both, then flipped the set in the final stretch. Rybakina saved two set points to hold for 5-5, but Sabalenka finally broke two games later, dragging the final into a decider and roaring at her box.
For a moment, it felt like the old script might return.
Rybakina tore it up.
In the third set, she took control again, breaking for 2-1 with clean, early ball-striking that pinned Sabalenka behind the baseline. At 5-2, she broke once more, finishing the game with a volley winner that underlined the completeness of her performance. A few points later, she closed the match with her 12th ace, the same way she had sealed the Australian Open title eight months earlier.
Same finish. Different stage. Same message.
A new No. 1, and a brutal 72 hours
This was more than a single trophy. With the win, Rybakina completed the best Grand Slam season of her career and climbed to the pinnacle of the sport. She became the first woman since Steffi Graf in 1995 to beat the world No. 1 in a Grand Slam final twice in the same year. Back then, Graf took down Arantxa Sánchez-Vicario in Paris and Monica Seles in New York. Now it is Rybakina carving her own line in that history.
When the WTA rankings update on Monday, she will be officially confirmed as the 30th woman to reach world No. 1 in the Open Era.
For Sabalenka, the contrast could hardly be harsher.
In 72 hours, she lost the ranking. Then the US Open title. She walks away from 2026 without a Grand Slam trophy, the first time since 2022 she has finished a season without a major.
Her on-court meltdown after the final — the smashed racquet, the visible fury, the tears she fought back — told its own story. Yet by the time she left New York, the tone had shifted again, from devastation to defiance.
"I don't even know how many weeks I was able to be there, but it was amazing. Let's see if Elena can beat me in that. If she continues playing like that, I'm in trouble," she said, already pointing at the next race, the next chase, the next chance to reclaim the top spot.
Rybakina has taken the throne. Sabalenka has seen exactly how. The question now is not whether this rivalry defines the season, but how far into the future it will stretch.
