Elena Rybakina slams ‘unprofessional’ WTA as star dangers lacking US Open
Elena Rybakina aired her grievances with the WTA after crashing out of the Canadian Open. The world No 4 had a tricky week in Montreal, finishing her quarter-final at 3am local time whereas her semi-final match was postponed to finals day attributable to rain. She crashed out to Liudmila Samsonova whereas sporting shoulder strapping. And Rybakina blamed the scheduling for her accidents as she admitted it might be powerful to get better with the US Open looming.
Rybakina slammed the WTA after her 1-6 6-1 6-2 defeat to Samsonova on Sunday. The 24-year-old waited round within the rain on Saturday to contest the semi-final earlier than each gamers had been pressured to return on Sunday, with the winner then taking part in the ultimate a few hours later.
The five-time title winner arrived on the courtroom together with her shoulder taped and later blamed her accidents on the scheduling over the course of the week. “Yeah, definitely I feel destroyed just because of the scheduling and the whole situation. I’m not really happy about it, but yeah, it is what it is,” the Kazakh stated.
“Unfortunately, players cannot do much in these situations. The decision is not really ours. Weather was not helpful. So I picked up some injuries I would say, but we tried to manage it and see how we will go from that.”
After defeating Daria Kasatkina at 3am native time within the early hours of Saturday following a three-hour-and-27-minute battle, Rybakina additionally blamed the WTA for weak management. “It’s the first time when the match went I think that long, and we finished also so late,” she added.
“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 a little bit weak for now, but hopefully something is going to change because this year it was many situations which I cannot really understand.”
Rybakina had then been set to face Samsonova simply 15 hours later and revealed that she barely slept. She continued: “Well, we finished at 3. Well, I showered, did some stretching a little bit, 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.”
But her major concern wasn’t the event in Montreal, as she admitted it might be powerful to get better in time for the US Open. “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 defined.
The fast turnaround meant that it was considerably a blessing in disguise to have the semi-final pushed again to Sunday. But Rybakina nonetheless didn’t anticipate to win as she stated the entire debacle might have been prevented.
“Yesterday I was feeling really bad, so I would say that it was better from my concentration overall to play today because I think the most important not to get injured even worse, but yesterday after such a short sleep it was really tough for me to play,” she stated.
“But, as I said, we could avoid the situation easily, but I don’t know why we didn’t. Yeah, it wasn’t easy to think about today’s match. If you win, you have to play another one, so I’m not really disappointed so much about the loss because it was kind of expected.
“I’m more disappointed, again, about just the whole situation. As I said, it’s not the first time with the players affected a lot.” With the Cincinnati Open starting subsequent week and the US Open beginning on August 28, Rybakina is unsure of her schedule.
“It’s tough to say. Now I have to see how I feel and evaluate the small injuries which I have now, so we will see. Yeah, I have to be smart in making any decision because US Open is soon,” she concluded. Meanwhile, Samsonova should play two matches in sooner or later for the second time this week, taking over Jessica Pegula within the closing.