CHENNAI: In 2018, Elena Rybakina had a few options staring at her. More than a dozen US universities had given her scholarships to come and study there. Her father wanted her to go and study there. The US Collegiate system is well known for producing tennis players — Somdev Devvarman being an Indian example — so her tennis would also improve. At that point in time, she was a Russian but she wasn't getting adequate support. She was travelling alone and there were no full-time coaches. She was one of many young and upcoming players within Russia, in danger of being lost (she was World No 425 in November 2017).
That's when the Kazakhstan Tennis Federation sensed an opportunity. They had already been down this route with moderate success — they had already recruited Russian-born men's players, Mikhail Kukushkin and Alexander Bublik, and women Yulia Putintseva among others — before. Bulat Utemuratov, the head of the KTF, who has a vast personal fortune, made the call to her in the middle of 2018. And Rybakina took the well-trodden path. She could finally afford a team and, more importantly, the people around her believed in her. Four years later, at a sun-kissed Wimbledon on Saturday, Rybakina paid back in interest with a maiden Major for one of the last countries that broke away from the Soviet Union. Utemuratov was on hand at SW19 to celebrate one of Kazakhstan's best-ever sporting moments.
After being very off the radar in the first set against Ons Jabeur, the Tunisian who became the first African woman to feature in the final of the Open Era, she recalibrated to lift the famous Venus Rosewater Dish 3-6, 6-2, 6-2. The match itself was always going to be a clash of contrasts between Rybakina's power and Jabeur's touch play and craft from the baseline. The Tunisian seemed to be racing away at the power of knows after breaking her opponent within the first 10 minutes of the game before racing away to take the first set. However, the 23-year-old broke to open the second stanza. In hindsight that broke open the match for her. Suddenly, Jabeeur seemingly lost all momentum she had built.
It also helped Rybakina settle into a rhythm that she didn't lose for the rest of the match. Her service, one of the biggest on the women's tour, was back. Her average serves speed, for example, was quicker in both the second and third sets when compared to the first according to the Wimbledon website. She also made other changes to her groundstrokes. In the first set, she was shanking her attempted winners. She was being hurried. Compare this: after hitting an ugly 17 unforced errors in the first set (7 winners), there were only seven unforced errors (13 winners) and nine winners and as many unforced errors in the third.
She started going big when she was facing the Jabeur serve. The end result was the Tunisian landing only 32 per cent of her first serves in the third set. Numbers like those meant it was only going to be a matter of time before Rybakina opened up a big lead. She did just that before ascending the throne 1 hour and 47 minutes into the match.
After her win over Simona Halep in the semifinals, she was specifically asked about representing Kazakhstan. She preferred to dead bat those questions. "I'm playing already for Kazakhstan for a long time," she had said. "I'm really happy representing Kazakhstan. They believed in me. There is no more question about how I feel. It's just already a long time on my journey as a Kazak player. I played Olympics, Fed Cup." It can perhaps be said that Moscow's loss is Nur Sultan's gain.