Former champion Elena Rybakina started off her 2024 Wimbledon Championships campaign with a solid win over Elena-Gabriela Ruse from Romania.
The Romanian player is a very tricky player when everything aligns for her, but luckily for the fourth seed, things didn’t align that well for Ruse in their first-round match at SW19 this year.
A very aggressive baseliner, Ruse can hit the ball about as well as any player on the WTA Tour, but it happens very rarely. Most of the time, she has a few good games, which also happened in this match, as she was up 2-1 with a break in hand at the start of the match.
Rybakina didn’t panic as she is quite experienced by now and slowly turned around the match as she found her rhythm better. She’s one of the best grass players on Tour, and she showed that two years ago when she won the grass-court major.
As the match progressed, the Kazakhstani player looked better and better and ultimately won the opening set 6-3. She wasn’t spectacular, but she created enough pressure on Ruse, who sent 16 balls wide, too much in only nine games of play.
Rybakina didn’t have the best preparation for Wimbledon, having to withdraw from Eastbourne after retiring at the Berlin Open due to an illness. However, she looked confident in this match, which is great to see, given her previous health issues.
The good thing for her was facing a player like Ruse, who is not consistent enough to really give her much trouble. An early break in the second sealed the deal for the former champion, and she would cruise to the finish line after that, winning the match 6-3, 6-1.