Elena Rybakina’s first tournament of the Australian swing came to an end in the quarterfinals.
The Kazakh, who won the WTA Finals in November, lost to Karolina Muchova in the last eight at the Brisbane International.
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Rybakina was seeded third at the tournament and had won her first two matches fairly comfortably, but fell to Muchova in three sets, 2-6, 6-2, 4-6.
Ahead of her seventh campaign in Melbourne, the former Australian Open finalist admitted she has been struggling with two parts of her game recently.
Elena Rybakina reacts to her defeat at the Brisbane International
“I mean, of course, every day is different, but [in] my last two matches, I was struggling a lot on the serve, and I think the movement was not the greatest,” said Rybakina in her post-match press conference.
“As I said, there is still time to work on [a] couple of things. Even if it doesn’t really work out in Melbourne, there is still the whole year ahead. Even if we do a good week of practicing now, it’s just going to be beneficial even later on.”
Expanding on her serving struggles, Rybakina explained: “I think the toss was a bit everywhere, and also push of the legs. It all has to connect together, and I was quite off.
“I think when you don’t start the matches well, after you try to adjust, and it’s too many things. So, yeah, definitely the start of the matches should be better for me.
“Serve, of course, it’s a big weapon, but sometimes even without getting extra free points, you can still have a good percentage, but not in my case, the last few days.”
Elena Rybakina’s serving statistics versus Karolina Muchova
Rybakina fired a total of nine aces in her match against Muchova at the Brisbane International, but also tallied seven double faults.
The former Wimbledon champion had a first serve percentage of 53.8%, having landed 49 out of 91.
While she was able to win over half of the points on her first serve with 67.3%, Rybakina only won 47.6% of second serve points.
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She faced 11 break points during the match and did manage to save eight of them, but the three converted by Muchova were enough to get her over the line.
Muchova’s next opponent at the Brisbane International is Sabalenka, against whom she has a winning record of 3-1.
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