Elena Rybakina overcomes Aryna Sabalenka for first Australian Open title

Sabalenka, 27, who has now lost three of her past four slam finals, will feel that she should have closed out this final from a position of such authority but it was Rybakina who won this match, rather than her opponent losing it. Rybakina will take extra confidence with her into the season having beaten both the world No1 and the world No2, Iga Swiatek, this fortnight. She has the tools and the temperament to break the hegemony of those two and the world No3 Coco Gauff.

“They’re tough opponents, and they have great results, and for so long they are at the top and it is stable. I’m happy that now I’m getting back to this level,” said Rybakina, who has won more matches in the past six months (38) than anyone on the WTA Tour. “I’ve been playing well. Yeah, I have a very aggressive style, so I think that’s definitely the key.”

Sabalenka is a four-times grand-slam champion but also a Gucci ambassador, a Vogue and Tatler magazine cover star and a bubbly, engaging character at the top of the women’s game. She said this week that she “wants to be something bigger than just a tennis player”. Rybakina, contrastingly, is quiet and reserved, stony-faced, and this was a ruthless performance executed with little fuss under the Rod Laver Arena roof.

The 26-year-old broke in the first game of the match, leaving the expressive Sabalenka shrugging her shoulders, and kept her opponent at arm’s length to take the first set 6-4. The 2022 Wimbledon champion came under siege for the next 90 minutes, but showed great resolve to upset the odds and secure her second grand-slam singles title. When she needed her sledgehammer of a serve the most, she found it, slamming an ace out wide to become the champion in Melbourne. She clenched her first and, having just bagged herself A$4.15million (about £2.11m), afforded herself half a smirk.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Belarus’s role as a staging ground for the war gave this final a strong political undercurrent, given that Sabalenka is Belarusian and Rybakina was born in Moscow. Rybakina switched allegiance from Russia to Kazakhstan — a nation of about 20million people in central Asia — eight years ago after a promise from the Kazakhstan Tennis Federation (KTF) of financial backing and support, something she did not receive while representing Russia. “Thank you so much to Kazakhstan. I felt the support from that corner,” Rybakina said after she collected the Daphne Akhurst Memorial Cup.

Rybakina has recently reunited with the Croatian coach Stefano Vukov after he was successful in August 2025 with an appeal against a 12-month ban from WTA events. Vukov, who was Rybakina’s coach when she won her 2022 Wimbledon title, was provisionally suspended in January 2025 while an investigation was active into an alleged breach of the WTA code of conduct over “abusive conduct and abuse of authority”. He denied any wrongdoing and returned to the tour in August 2025. Rybakina has said that Vukov, who was in her court-side box here and collected an award at the presentation, has “never mistreated” her. Though it is not known which specific area of the code of conduct was the subject of the investigation, the manner in which Vukov communicates with Rybakina on and off the court has come under scrutiny in the past. “I think it’s a win for all the team, all the people who support me,” she said afterwards.

This was a rematch of the 2023 Australian Open final — which Sabalenka won from a set down — but the dynamic coming into this one was very different. Three years ago Rybakina was the Wimbledon champion, while Sabalenka had no grand-slam singles titles to her name. In the years that followed Rybakina had failed to add to her slam count, while Sabalenka became the world No1, a position she has now held for 75 weeks, and the tour’s dominant player, collecting her four grand-slam titles along the way.

Sabalenka kept up the tradition of writing on her fitness coach Jason Stacy’s head before the match, this time going with “Mentality!” But Rybakina was also full of confidence. She won the end-of-season tournament, the WTA Finals, last year, beating Sabalenka in the final, and is perhaps the only player on tour who can absorb Sabalenka’s power and then send the ball back with interest.

“I played great until a certain point, and then I couldn’t resist that aggression that she had on court today,” Sabalenka said. “I was really upset with myself because I had opportunities.”

Rybakina saved the first five break points she faced here, playing aggressive groundstrokes into the corners in the crucial moments. Rybakina’s serve — which was not quite as reliable as usual — regularly pushed Sabalenka out wide and she was comfortable in finishing the point with her next shot. It was “serve plus one” tennis at its finest.

In the second set Sabalenka lost only one point behind her first serve, which went a long way to forcing the decider. Her service games raced by without alarm and suddenly it was the Rybakina serve which came with peril. After nine games on serve Sabalenka struck, breaking to love for an even match.

Sabalenka kept her foot to the pedal to secure a 3-0 deciding-set lead. Victory was in the rear-view mirror. But Rybakina — who by this point had failed to carve out a break point since the first game of the match — won four games on the spin to tip this topsy-turvy match back in her favour once and for all. And then the most lethal weapon on tour secured the all important championship point.

Briton wins doubles title and regains world No1 spot

Meanwhile Britain’s Neal Skupski claimed the men’s doubles title alongside his American partner Christian Harrison. The No6 seeds beat the new Australian pairing of Jason Kubler and Marc Polmans 7-6 (7-4), 6-4.

Skupski, the 36-year-old from Liverpool who is now the world No1 again for the first time since 2022, is a two-times doubles grand-slam champion, having claimed the 2023 Wimbledon title alongside his long-time doubles partner Wesley Koolhof. He joined forces with Harrison for the first time in Adelaide this month. “We didn’t know how it would go. It seems to be going well so far,” Skupski said.

“Changing partners to Christian, it definitely gave me a new lease of life. It definitely got me to be more hungry. I’ve known Christian for a long time as well. We played a futures together straight out of college for me. 2013. We took a quick loss in the first round. That was in a Glasgow futures. Obviously we’ve upped our level since then.

“The doubles system in Britain is very good. Obviously down to Louis Cayer who has put in a lot of work with everyone. I can’t thank him enough.”

Click here to read article