Rybakina d. Qinwen Zheng 3-6 6-1 6-4
ELENA GRABS THE WORLD NO. 1 RANKING.
She’s also into her first-ever US Open semifinal.
With how well she’s played over the last year, no one deserves the No. 1 ranking more.
Reigning WTA Finals Champion.
Reigning Australian Open Champion.
From last October to March this year, she won TWELVE consecutive matches against top 10 players…
7 of them were against the top 5.
2 were over the reigning World No. 1.
✅5th Grand Slam SF
✅47th win of 2026
Many sports journeys are loud, but Lena’s was decidedly quiet…
Until the whole world had to listen.
Elena Rybakina, World No. 1, the best tennis player on EARTH.
🇰🇿🩵🇰🇿
INSANE COMEBACK!
Olympic champ Zheng Qinwen, a qualifier this week, comes back from 0-5 (!) in the 3rd set to beat the 2017 runner up and 2025 AusOpen champ Madison Keys 1-6, 7-6(3), 7-5 and reach the last 16 at the US Open.
6th Grand Slam 2nd week for her.
TOUGH for Keys...
Probably the most clear and lucid explanation of what happened ? What can or will happen ? Brace yourself Nepal has 2000 of these and 47 are marked dangerous 🙄🙄🙄🙄
One of the funniest conversations is talking to professional athletes about tennis. They all respect the hell out of it because they actually understand what elite athleticism looks like.
Then you talk to some guy who played high school sports and he thinks tennis is easy.
These are 6’4”, 6’6”+ freak athletes moving like gazelles for four to five hours, making decisions at hockey speed, with the hand-eye coordination of a baseball player, the reaction time of a fighter, and the endurance of a boxer mixed with an ultramarathoner.
And they have to do it while controlling a ball with inches of margin, point after point, completely alone.
There’s a reason elite athletes respect tennis.
Sorry, if you still can’t see it, you’re probably the dweeb who got picked last for dodgeball in middle school.
@lordsambrah It’s also one of the most mentally challenging sports in the world. It’s an athletic chess match between you and your opponent for 2-3+ hours. Constantly adjusting and then readjusting to what they do. It’s so fun to watch them battle