Elena Ryabkina has extended her rankings lead over Coco Gauff as the world No 2 after defeating Mirra Andreeva to reach the Stuttgart Open final.<\/p>\n
The Kazakh reeled off eight of the final nine games against the world No 9 to claim a 7-5, 6-1 victory.<\/p>\n
It is Rybakina\u2019s<\/a> first victory against the Russian since 2023 after losing both of their 2025 encounters \u2013 in Dubai and Indian Wells.<\/p>\n The match also came shortly after her late-night thriller against Leylah Fernandez, which finished close to midnight.<\/p>\n \u201cFirst set, we were going pretty even,\u201d the world no 2 commented during her on-court interview.<\/p>\n \u201cI had some opportunities to go up but didn\u2019t take them. But I\u2019m happy that in these important moments, my serve worked and I stayed aggressive.<\/p>\n \u201cThen in the second set being up, I was more free to hit, to step in, to play even more aggressive.<\/p>\n \u201cSo I\u2019m pretty happy with the performance. It was really solid. And I guess the three-hour match yesterday, it did help me today.\u201d<\/p>\n Alexander Zverev\u2019s struggles highlighted by small rankings lead over \u2018inactive\u2019 Djokovic after latest loss<\/a><\/p>\n Former world No 4 believes Juan Martin del Potro could have \u2018changed tennis history\u2019 without injuries<\/a><\/p>\n She will next face Karolina Muchova, who battled past Elina Svitolina 6-4, 2-6, 6-4 to snap a three-match losing streak against the Ukrainian.<\/p>\n The Stuttgart Open marks Rybakina\u2019s third final of 2026, having also reached the showpiece match at the Australian Open and Indian Wells.<\/p>\n Muchova holds a 2-1 edge in their head-to-head, with all three encounters coming on hard courts.<\/p>\n The Czech was also victorious in their most recent meeting, winning 6-2, 2-6, 6-4 at the Brisbane International in January.<\/p>\n \u201cI thought it was working, so I was trying to \u2013 that\u2019s what exactly happened in the second set,\u201d Muchova commented during her post-match press conference.<\/p>\n \u201cI think I kind of start to play the way she likes to play and play the long rallies.<\/p>\n \u201cThen I just realized, \u2018okay, I have to again be more aggressive and try to approach the net or change the rhythm.\u2019 I think that\u2019s the way that it\u2019s good for me to play against her.\u201d<\/p>\n As a result of reaching the final, Rybakina is confirmed to gain at least 217 ranking points and is sitting on 8325 points in the Live WTA Rankings.<\/p>\n This extends her lead over world No 3 Gauff, who fell in the quarter-finals of the event to Muchova, to 1,047 points.<\/p>\n However, Rybakina remains 2,570 ranking points behind world No 1 Aryna Sabalenka in the Live WTA Rankings.<\/p>\n If the Kazakh were to win the final and lift the trophy in Stuttgart, she would gain another 175 points, extending her lead over Gauff to 1,222.<\/p>\n In more positive news for Rybakina, she is not defending any ranking points at the Madrid Masters, having already counted her sixth-best WTA 1000 result of 65 points \u2013 higher than her 2025 tally in the Spanish capital.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, world No 3 Gauff is defending 650 points, while world No 1 Sabalenka is defending the maximum 1,000 points after having lifted the trophy.<\/p>\n The WTA Madrid Masters will take place from April 22 \u2013 May 2.<\/p>\n The post Stuttgart Open: Elena Rybakina extends rankings lead over Gauff after downing Andreeva to reach final<\/a> appeared first on Tennis365<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Elena Ryabkina has extended her rankings lead over Coco Gauff as the world No 2 after defeating Mirra Andreeva to reach the Stuttgart Open final. The Kazakh reeled off eight of the final nine games against the world No 9 to claim a 7-5, 6-1 victory. It is Rybakina\u2019s first victory against the Russian since […]<\/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-2050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2050","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=2050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2050\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Latest Tennis News<\/h2>\n