Rybakina Ends Sabalenka's New York Reign and Completes the Hard-Court Double

The last point of the US Open summed up the fortnight. Elena Rybakina tossed the ball, hit her twelfth ace of the afternoon and raised both arms, while across the net Aryna Sabalenka turned and smashed her racket into the Arthur Ashe court. Rybakina won 6-4, 5-7, 6-2 — denying Sabalenka a third straight New York title and turning the rivalry that has shaped the 2026 season decisively in her favour.

A clean first set, a frustrated champion

Rybakina's opening set was about as tidy as grand slam tennis gets. She made almost nothing loose, took Sabalenka's third service game to move ahead, and never gave the break back. Sabalenka, by contrast, was spraying the ball — and her temper went with it. After a double fault she swatted a ball into the stands and was handed a code violation. Rybakina closed out the set 6-4 with a two-handed backhand winner.

The remarkable part was that she did it without her first serve firing. Rybakina landed only 27 per cent of first deliveries in the opening set, yet still won 22 of her 30 service points and did not face a single break point — a measure of how much damage she can do even with her second ball.

Sabalenka finds a way back

The second set became a serving contest. The two traded eleven straight holds, and the longer it went the more obvious it became that one return game would decide it. Rybakina's level dipped just enough for Sabalenka to seize that moment: she attacked a second serve with a fierce backhand down the line, forced the break and finished the set at the net with an overhead. At 7-5, a stadium that had been largely behind the defending champion found its voice.

The decider was never close

Whatever momentum Sabalenka had built lasted only a few minutes into the third set. Rybakina broke early, and from there her service games barely gave her opponent a look. A second break took her to 5-2, and she served out the title in the fashion that has built her career, finishing on an ace. The celebration was brief by anyone's standards but hers — a wide smile, arms raised, and then a walk to the net.

The match lasted 2 hours and 21 minutes. It was Rybakina's 41st career win over a top-10 opponent and her tenth of 2026, as well as her 49th match win of a season in which she has now collected three titles, taking her career tally to 14.

From not touching a racket to lifting the trophy

The injury Rybakina referred to was no footnote. An ankle problem forced her out of her Cincinnati quarter-final against Iga Swiatek, and she has said she did not pick up a racket for seven days before the tournament began. New York had also historically been her weakest major.

She eased in quietly, dropping no sets in her first four matches, including a 6-2 6-4 win over Jessica Bouzas Maneiro in the second round and a 7-6 (6) 6-3 victory against Yuliia Starodubtseva in the third.

Her route to the title still went through a formidable list. She beat two-time champion Naomi Osaka in the fourth round, came from a set down against Zheng Qinwen (3-6, 6-1, 6-4) in a quarter-final that also clinched the No 1 ranking, repeated the trick against 2023 champion Coco Gauff (3-6, 6-4, 6-4) in the semi-finals, and then beat the woman who had won the previous two editions. She is also the first player to qualify for this year's WTA Finals.

The Osaka match was a statement. Rybakina needed only a little over an hour, hitting 7 aces and 29 winners against 17 unforced errors, and the four-time major champion admitted afterwards that there was little room to breathe against that delivery.

Gauff, beaten from a set up in the semi-finals, pointed to the relentlessness: in her words, Rybakina does "a great job of just being there every point and putting a lot of pressure on you" on both serve and return. Rybakina, for her part, admitted the chase for top spot had weighed on her. "[There] was so much going on inside," she said, describing reaching No 1 as a relief because one goal had been achieved, after which "you just try to play."

A season without a major for Sabalenka

For Sabalenka, the defeat closes a slam season that ends empty-handed despite reaching two finals. She had arrived in New York describing this tournament as "a last push for the season", admitting she was "super desperate" after a flat middle of the year, and she played like it — dropping just two games against Polina Iatcenko in the second round, edging Linda Noskova in a final-set tie-break in the quarter-finals and then dismantling Jessica Pegula 7-5, 6-2 in the semi-finals for the second year running to reach a fourth consecutive US Open final. A win would have made her only the third woman, after Chris Evert and Serena Williams, to win three US Opens in a row.

She was gracious at the ceremony, congratulating Rybakina "on an incredible year, an incredible result," and candid afterwards about the racket: "It's really tough to control your emotions when you lose in the final of the Grand Slam."