“Rybakina defeats Ostapenko to reach her first final in Rome and debut in Top 5”

Pauses and restarts, sprints and braking, clouds and rain. It’s not an easy evening, but a happy one for Elena Rybakina. The Kazakh, number 6 in the world, defeated 63 64 Jelena Ostapenko, number 20. She reached her first final in Rome, and this result will allow her to make her debut in the Top 5. By winning the title, she would certainly be among the top four seeds at Roland Garros.

Before the Internazionali BNL d’Italia, he had won only one of the three matches played on clay during the season. Here she is the favorite in the final against Anhelina Kalinina, number 47, the lowest-ranked finalist in the history of the tournament since 1985, when Raffaella Reggi, number 61, won the title in Taranto. The Ukraine, projected to debut in the Top 25, won the only previous direct comparison, last year on the green clay of Charleston.

The match soon goes downhill for the Wimbledon champion. Ostapenko clears the first break point with an ace, but doesn’t save the game. The climb gets harder and harder, Rybakina manages to take the field and open it while the Latvian takes more and more risks to stay in the exchange. The 2017 Roland Garros champion starts hitting balls but Rybakina takes control of the game away from her, at least until she goes to serve for the set.

It’s the most tangled game of the set. Rybakina misses the first three set points, systematically attacked by Ostapenko’s deep answers and body. She concedes three break points with two double faults and a forced error, always canceled thanks above all to the thrust of the serve. Once the last obstacle has been circumvented, she closes the set with the fifth ace of the match, the 28th in the tournament, the 274th in the season, and reinforces her record for the number of aces on the circuit in 2023.

At the end of the set, he asks for a medical time out and takes a drug. Upon his return, he loses his serve at the first opportunity. Ostapenko, always defeated on the seven occasions she started with a set behind in 2023, goes up 4-1. And in these games, Rybakina undergoes what we could call the “Halep treatment”. The reference is to the 2017 Roland Garros final when the Romanian confessed that she had long felt like a spectator against an Ostapenko capable of repeating winning strokes.

But then the rain arrives on 4-2. The players return to the locker room, after a few minutes they return to the field, play four points and on 15-40 Ostapenko serve stops again. After about an hour the rain gives a break, and the last half of the match begins. Ostapenko of points wins four and Rybakina accelerates towards victory.

She thus becomes the third player in the Open Era to reach the final at the Australian Open, Indian Wells, Miami and Rome in the same season after Monica Seles in 1991 and Maria Sharapova in 2012.