Rybakina reaches US Open semi-finals and takes the WTA No. 1 ranking

Elena Rybakina beat Zheng Qinwen 3-6, 6-1, 6-4 on Wednesday in the US Open quarter-finals and, with that result, locked the WTA No. 1 ranking for the first time. Aryna Sabalenka's stay at the top, 99 consecutive weeks since 21 October 2024, ends when the new list is published on Monday. It is the sixth-longest streak in WTA history. Sabalenka has held the ranking for 107 weeks in total.

Rybakina is the 30th woman to reach No. 1 and the first singles player from Kazakhstan to do it. She is 27. She arrived in New York as one of three players who could take the ranking from Sabalenka, with Jessica Pegula and Coco Gauff. Those two, and Sabalenka herself, needed Rybakina to lose before the semi-finals and then had to win the title. That door is now shut.

The match was not clean. Rybakina dropped a set for the first time in this tournament. She started poorly, piled up errors and, by her own account, got negative. She struck 20 winners as the match turned. Zheng, the Olympic champion, had come through three qualifying rounds after a chronic elbow injury knocked her down the list. She had spent close to twelve hours on court through qualifying and five main-draw matches. A double fault handed Rybakina the break for 5-4 in the third. Rybakina served it out.

The path to this quarter-final already had two recoveries in it. Rybakina erased a 5-0 third-set hole against Madison Keys in the third round and another 5-0 first-set hole against No. 8 Iga Swiatek in the fourth. This is her first US Open semi-final. She will play either fifth seed Mirra Andreeva or 2023 champion Coco Gauff. Sabalenka faces Pegula in the other half. A Rybakina-Sabalenka final would repeat this year's Australian Open title match, which Rybakina won in three sets.

Her year explains the ranking more than one afternoon in Queens. She won the WTA Finals last November, then took the Australian Open, her second major after Wimbledon four years earlier. A year ago, during the North American hard-court swing, she had fallen out of the top ten and was dealing with health and form. The climb back is the season.

Her own ranking of the ranking was flat. "It's just a number right now. My goal is to win the tournaments which I play," she said. "I go just one match at a time. It's an amazing achievement but you know how quickly everything can change in tennis. I just need to focus on my game, try to recover and enjoy tomorrow." She also said the quarter-final was full of nerves and not the highest level, and that she had told herself to keep fighting.

Zheng left to applause. Qualifiers who reach the last eight of a major with an injured elbow do not need a ranking footnote. Rybakina's footnote is larger. No. 1 on Monday is independent of who lifts the trophy on Saturday. Sabalenka can still win a third straight US Open. She cannot keep the ranking.

The tennis is now a semi-final against Gauff or Andreeva and, if the draw breaks that way, a final against the woman she is about to replace. The administrative fact is simpler. After 99 weeks the list changes. Kazakhstan has a world No. 1. Rybakina has a number she says she will not play for. The next match will show whether that line holds under the lights at Arthur Ashe.