Elena Rybakina qualifies for WTA Tour Finals, overtaking Mirra Andreeva with late-season surge

Elena Rybakina has qualified for the WTA Tour Finals with a run of six straight wins, overtaking Mirra Andreeva in the penultimate week of the regular WTA Tour season.

The 2022 Wimbledon champion won last week’s Ningbo Open in China, before Andreeva’s decision to play neither this week’s Pan Pacific Open in Tokyo, nor the Guangzhou Open in China, opened the door for a last-minute overtake. Rybakina needed two wins at the tournament in Japan, and defeated Leylah Fernandez of Canada and then her compatriot Victoria Mboko to secure a spot in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Rybakina’s six wins also included four victories against players who had beaten her in their previous meeting: Fernandez and Mboko, and Jasmine Paolini and Ekaterina Alexandrova, who Rybakina defeated in the semifinal and final of the Ningbo Open respectively.

Just under three weeks ago, Rybakina and Paolini appeared to be in a straight fight for the last spot, with Andreeva and Jessica Pegula too far ahead of them to be caught.

Pegula qualified at the Wuhan Open, but Andreeva’s troubling run of form, which has been marked by frustration bubbling over during her matches, continued at the Ningbo Open in China, where she lost to world No. 219 Zhu Lin. Her absence from this week’s two tournaments then confirmed Paolini’s qualification, as well as giving Rybakina the apparently easy opportunity to overtake the Russian 18-year-old, whom she trailed by just 14 points.

That deficit was misleading. A player’s WTA Tour ranking is composed of 18 events, and Rybakina had already played 18 before this week. Players are also required to count their points earned at the six combined WTA 1000 / ATP Masters 1000 tournaments before factoring in their best results at the other WTA 1000s and smaller events.

Some of Rybakina’s worst performances came at those combined events, and some of her best came at the other tournaments. Her worst, best result outside of the combined 1000-level events was a WTA 500 semifinal, which carries 195 points, so Rybakina had to match that at the Pan Pacific Open to qualify. She did it, and will join Aryna Sabalenka, Iga Świątek, Coco Gauff, Amanda Anisimova, Madison Keys, Pegula and Paolini at the season-ending event which begins November 1.

Andreeva meanwhile misses out despite winning two WTA 1000 titles and reaching two Grand Slam quarterfinals.

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

Tennis, Women’s Tennis

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