Elena Rybakina has made it to the championship match at the WTA Finals in Riyadh after a tough three-set win against Jessica Pegula in the semifinals. Rybakina clinched the match with a final score of 4-6, 6-4, 6-3, earning her a spot in the biggest final of her season. After her semifinal win, Rybakina shared an important update about a shoulder issue that’s been bothering her for a while.

In her post-match interview, as reported by The Tennis Letter on X, she was asked about the visible tape on her shoulder and was seen grabbing at it during the match.

Rybakina acknowledged the problem, stating, “Well, hopefully I can recover for tomorrow. Of course, it was a lot of matches. I also served big, so I had to adjust a little bit. And for now, I’m pushing myself. I know now it’s one last match left, so I will try to do everything possible with the team to recover. At the same time, we don’t want to make it worse, of course, going into off-season. But yeah, we will see. But for now, I’ve been managing, and hopefully it’s going to be not worse tomorrow.”

This injury scare is not entirely new for Elena Rybakina; she first felt discomfort in the same shoulder during her warm-up before a match just days earlier. At that time, she described it, stating, “And with the shoulder it just happened on the warm up. I felt a bit uncomfortable but we’re going to work on that. So hopefully it’s not going to be an issue for my next match. And yeah, I will try to do my best as always.”

The shoulder issue presents a significant challenge for Rybakina, whose serving power is one of her most significant assets on the court. This physical concern comes at the end of a demanding period for the Kazakh player, who has endured a packed schedule. Despite all that, Rybakina didn’t forget to acknowledge her American opponent, who fought hard against her in Riyadh.

Elena Rybakina didn’t shy away from giving her opponent the required credit

After the match, Elena Rybakina talked about how challenging it was to face Jessica Pegula, saying, “It was such a tough battle. It’s always very difficult to play against Jessica and yeah, she started pretty well. I was a bit slow. Again, it was very quick. She broke me, so yeah, it was not easy to come back, but I’m glad that I managed to find my way in the second set and yeah, win it in this three sets battle.”

Before this match, the American was ahead in the stats. Yeah, if you check out their head-to-head matchups, Pegula was ahead with a 3-1 record. So, she’s still in the lead, and with this win, Rybakina has secured her spot in the final round of the WTA Finals. Additionally, the Kazak mentioned, “Yeah, definitely the serve when I needed it helped me and yeah, I was trying to stay focused each point and we had some very tough rallies and yeah, I’m really happy that in the end I managed to push myself a bit more and yeah, won it.”

Rybakina really stood out with a 72% win rate on her first serve, while Pegula had a 59% win rate. In a similar vein, the scenes looked pretty much the same when we checked out the win rate on the second serves. So, it’s 52% for the Kazakh, and the American is at 48%. In the end, this did assist Rybakina qualify for the finals.