Elena Rybakina: A Season of Grand Slam Dominance

Elena Rybakina is building the kind of Grand Slam résumé that bends a season around one name. Three majors now sit on her shelf after a ruthless run to the US Open title, and across 2026 she has dropped just two matches at the sport’s biggest stages.

Those two defeats, though, tell their own story.

A season of dominance, punctured twice

Rybakina opened the year by conquering Melbourne, adding the Australian Open crown to the Wimbledon title she claimed in 2022. Hard courts have become her natural territory, the stage where her heavy serve and flat, penetrating groundstrokes do maximum damage.

By the time she arrived in Paris, the numbers were already intimidating. Clay, however, remains the one surface that still asks awkward questions of her movement and patience, even if the results this spring suggested she was closing that gap. She lifted a fifth career clay title in Stuttgart and pushed through to the quarter-finals in Rome, hinting at a serious Roland Garros challenge.

The opening round went to script. Rybakina brushed aside Veronika Erjavec 6-2, 6-2, looking every inch a contender.

Then Yuliia Starodubtseva walked onto Court 7 and tore up the plan.

Starodubtseva’s shock in Paris

Ranked 55 in the world at the time and without a single appearance beyond the second round of a Slam, the Ukrainian arrived in Paris with little fanfare and a recent six-match losing streak still fresh in the memory. On paper, this was a routine assignment for a player of Rybakina’s stature.

It became one of the upsets of the tournament.

Starodubtseva recovered from a set down to beat Rybakina 3-6, 6-1, 7-6(4), handing the Kazakh her earliest exit at a major since the 2024 US Open, where she had withdrawn with a back injury. This time there was no physical escape route, no asterisk. Rybakina was outplayed in the decider and out of Roland Garros in round two.

The result jolted the draw and jolted Rybakina. It also lit a spark in Starodubtseva’s season. Though she slipped outside the top 70 during a subsequent dip, the Paris win marked her as more than a one-off threat.

Wimbledon sting: Mertens breaks the pattern

If clay is the surface that still tests Rybakina, grass is supposed to be home. A former Wimbledon champion, she walked back through the gates at the All England Club as one of the clear favourites, armed with a 7–1 head-to-head record against 25th seed Elise Mertens.

The numbers meant nothing once the balls were in play.

Mertens absorbed Rybakina’s pace, redirected it, and turned a familiar matchup on its head. She edged a tight first-set tiebreak 7-6(4), then ran away with the second 6-1 in one of the shocks of the Championships. For the second time in 2026, Rybakina’s Slam campaign ended earlier than expected, this time in the third round on the lawns where she had previously lifted the trophy.

Starodubtseva in Paris. Mertens at Wimbledon. Two names on a very short list.

Revenge in New York, and a new benchmark

Rybakina’s response came where it so often does now: under the hard-court lights. At the US Open she marched through the draw with the authority of a player who had learned from the season’s scars rather than been defined by them.

Fate, and the draw, brought Starodubtseva back across the net in the third round in New York. The Ukrainian, buoyed by another strong run that secured her a second career appearance in a Slam third round, had rebuilt her ranking and confidence. This time, though, Rybakina refused to yield.

In a tight opening set, she edged the tiebreak 8-6, then tightened her grip to close out a 7-6(6), 6-3 victory. It was measured, controlled revenge, the kind that settles a score without theatrics and sets a new tone for a rivalry.

Starodubtseva still left Flushing Meadows with a significant reward: a career-high ranking of No. 43 and a first-time breakthrough into the top 50, recognition for a player who had turned a season of streaks into something more substantial.

Rybakina left with something bigger. She went on to claim the title, her first US Open and third Grand Slam overall, sealing a 2026 major record of 17 wins and just 2 losses — the best of her career across a single season.

Two slips. Seventeen steps forward. With a year like that behind her, the real question now is not who has beaten Elena Rybakina in 2026, but who can stop her from adding even more silver to a rapidly growing collection.