Elena Rybakina rallied from a set down to beat Russian fourth seed Ekaterina Alexandrova 3-6 6-0 6-2 and win the Ningbo Open title on Sunday, as her late surge to reach next month’s WTA Finals gained momentum.<\/p>\n
A 10th career title for Rybakina means the Kazakh only has to reach the semi-finals of the Pan Pacific Open in Tokyo this week to seal the last qualifying spot for the season finale at the expense of Russian teenager Mirra Andreeva, Reuters reported.<\/p>\n
Others who have qualified for the WTA Finals, to be held in the Saudi Arabian capital of Riyadh from November 1-8, are Aryna Sabalenka, Iga Swiatek, Coco Gauff, Amanda Anisimova, Jessica Pegula, Madison Keys and Jasmine Paolini.<\/p>\n
“I’d like to congratulate Ekaterina for a great week and great season,” said Rybakina.<\/p>\n
“It hasn’t been an easy year for all of us, a difficult schedule … thank you so much to my team for always pushing me to be better.<\/p>\n
“The end of the season isn’t easy but without you I wouldn’t be here. Hopefully, we can push a little more this week (in Tokyo).”<\/p>\n
Alexandrova made a flying start, racing 4-1 ahead as Rybakina struggled to rein in the errors and mix up her game, before the 30-year-old comfortably took the first set with a powerful forehand winner.<\/p>\n
Desperate to prevent a fourth straight defeat by Alexandrova on hardcourts, Russian-born Rybakina came out firing in the next set, hitting a crosscourt winner to consolidate an early break and lay the platform to level the match.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Elena Rybakina rallied from a set down to beat Russian fourth seed Ekaterina Alexandrova 3-6 6-0 6-2 and win the Ningbo Open title on Sunday, as her late surge to reach next month’s WTA Finals gained momentum. A 10th career title for Rybakina means the Kazakh only has to reach the semi-finals of the Pan …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":55998,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55996"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55996\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56000,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55996\/revisions\/56000"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}