Former world No 5 Jimmy Arias has identified the \u201cbiggest edge\u201d Elena Rybakina has over her rivals after the Kazakh\u2019s triumph at the 2026 Australian Open.<\/p>\n
Rybakina<\/a> defeated world No 1 Aryna Sabalenka 6-4, 4-6, 6-4 in the Australian Open championship match to secure her second Grand Slam title after her 2022 Wimbledon victory. She was a runner-up to Sabalenka at the 2023 Australian Open.<\/p>\n The 26-year-old climbed two places to her career-best ranking position of world No 3 when the WTA Rankings updated this week, and she is just 378 points behind world No 2 Iga Swiatek.<\/p>\n The 12-time WTA Tour<\/a> titlist is 3,380 points adrift of world No 1 Aryna Sabalenka, but she could challenge the Belarusian this year given she has far few points to defend \u2014 particularly at the remaining three majors.<\/p>\n Speaking on Tennis Channel, Arias broke down the advantage that Rybakina\u2019s serve gives her.<\/p>\n \u201c[The serve] is the biggest thing, the biggest edge that she has, because one of the things in the women\u2019s game that is attacked is second serves. They are relentless; if you miss first serves, your second serve is gonna be crushed,\u201d said the five-time ATP Tour title winner.<\/p>\n Andy Roddick gives verdict on Elena Rybakina\u2019s controversial coach after Australian Open win<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n WTA Rankings: How many points will Sabalenka, Swiatek, Rybakina, Anisimova, Gauff drop in February?<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Want more from Tennis365? Add us as a preferred source on Google to your favourites list<\/a> for tennis coverage you can trust.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cHer second serve is also better than most, and her first serve gets her all kinds of free points, so she\u2019s gonna hold serve at a higher clip.<\/p>\n \u201cShe\u2019s already starting every match with a little bit of an edge, and I think she\u2019s starting to believe it now, and she\u2019s starting to have that confidence and understand how good she is.\u201d<\/p>\n Steve Johnson, a former world No 21, warned that Rybakina\u2019s level is a \u201cbad sign\u201d for other players at the top of women\u2019s tennis.<\/p>\n \u201cYeah, this is the best I think I\u2019ve seen her play, and even that\u2019s dating back to when she won Wimbledon a few years ago,\u201d said the four-time ATP titlist.<\/p>\n \u201cThis has just been continued success for her. Week in, week out, she\u2019s going out there beating the best players in the world, and it doesn\u2019t faze her.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd she looks like she\u2019s getting more and more comfortable on that stage, which is a bad sign for the women at the top of the game, because she is here to stay, and I think there\u2019s going to be a couple more big trophies in her future this season.\u201d<\/p>\n READ NEXT: WTA Rankings Race To Riyadh: Rybakina leads, Mboko & Jovic star, Swiatek & Gauff not in top 8<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n The post Elena Rybakina\u2019s \u2018biggest edge\u2019 over Sabalenka, Swiatek and her other rivals revealed<\/a> appeared first on Tennis365<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Former world No 5 Jimmy Arias has identified the \u201cbiggest edge\u201d Elena Rybakina has over her rivals after the Kazakh\u2019s triumph at the 2026 Australian Open. Rybakina defeated world No 1 Aryna Sabalenka 6-4, 4-6, 6-4 in the Australian Open championship match to secure her second Grand Slam title after her 2022 Wimbledon victory. She […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1715\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}WTA Tour News<\/h2>\n