Elena Rybakina crashed out of the Canadian Open after suffering a semi-final defeat at the hands of Liudmila Samsonova. Apart from on-court performances, Rybakina seemed to be angry with the organisers for the poor scheduling of matches. She has criticised the organisers for being “weak” in terms of leadership. Rybakina finished her quarter-final match against Daria Kasatkina at 3 am local time on Saturday. The third seed won the match 5-7, 7-5, 7-6. Later in the day, Rybakina returned to court for her semis clash, which got postponed due to rain. Finally, the match took place on Sunday and Rybakina failed to navigate her way to the final. She went down 1-6, 6-1, 6-2.
Calling it “unprofessional”, Rybakina said during a presser, “It’s the first time when the match went I think that long, and we also finished so late. It’s the first time and hopefully the last time because I think it’s been a little bit unprofessional from the – I cannot say really the tournament because I think that the most important is the WTA here.
‘Leadership is a little bit weak for now, but hopefully something is going to change because this year there were many situations which I cannot really understand,” she added.
Just 15 hours after her quarter-final game, Rybakina was scheduled to face Samsonova at the last-four stage. The 24-year-old revealed that she hardly got time to sleep after her quarter-final victory. “Well, we finished at 3. Well, I showered, did some stretching a little bit, and went back to the hotel. I think I fell asleep at 5. Yeah, I mean, I woke up at 10, and then it was impossible to sleep. So, yeah, it definitely was not enough time to recover.”
Rybakina raises US Open concerns
Rybakina, who seemed to be worried about the fixture congestion, which can very much take a toll on her fitness ahead of the US Open, added, “The worst thing is that it’s not about this tournament. It’s going to be not easy to recover for the next two weeks,” Rybakina expressed. The US Open will begin on August 28.
It was America’s Jessica Pegula who won the Canadian Open. Pegula routed Samsonova 6-1, 6-0 to claim the third WTA victory of her career. Pegula needed 49 minutes to get the better of Samsonova in the summit clash. With this, she became the first American to win the competition since Serena Williams in 2013.
