Elena Rybakina continued her surge on the Tour this season with a straight-sets win over Karolina Muchova to win the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix in Stuttgart.
The Kazakh world No.2 came through a testing opening set before sealing a comprehensive 7-5, 6-1 win over former French Open finalist Muchova. Rybakina was particularly impressive behind her serve in the second set, winning 16 out of 19 points played. Overall, she hit 24 winners against 19 unforced errors en route to winning Stuttgart for the second time in her career. She also won the event in 2024.
“I’m really happy with the win, and it’s nice to win the same tournament a second time,” Rybakina told reporters.
“It’s a really nice, special feeling.”
Rybakina is the first player on the WTA Tour to win a 25th main draw match this season. Stuttgart was her second title of 2026 after the Australian Open. She was also runner-up at Indian Wells to Aryna Sabalenka.
The recent run of results by the 26-year-old has elevated her to a world ranking high of second, a position she first achieved on March 16th. She has also won nine out of her last 13 matches against top-20 players.
Despite her success, Rybakina has insisted that she is not fixating on becoming world No.1 and dethroning Sabalenka. There is still a gap of more than 2000 points between the two.
“I’m not really focusing on the points,” Rybakina explains.
“I know my team is checking sometimes, but that’s not the goal. The most important thing for us is to be consistent and do well because you can’t control how other players are gonna play. You just need to do your job as best as possible.
“I think for now everything is working well and we just try to continue now for the big tournaments ahead, and hopefully I can get all the positives from this week to the next tournaments.”
At the upcoming Madrid Open, Rybakina could close the gap on Sabalenka even more, as she is defending only 85 points compared to 1000 points for the top seed. She will find out her path at the event on Monday when the draw takes place.
Rybakina has won 13 WTA titles and earned more than $28M in prize money so far in her career.
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