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Her great strength: Elena Rybakina on serve
Photo: WILLIAM WEST / AFP
The audition:
Victoria Azarenka won the Australian Open in 2012 and 2013, and she entered the arena with that confidence.
Before going onto the pitch in the Rod Laver Arena, she made a few more hitting movements in an anteroom, which both players entered almost at the same time.
Then she quickly pulled on the Paris Saint-Germain jersey.
Her six-year-old son Leo is a big fan. All eyes were on the 33-year-old.
Azarenka was also the first to enter the square.
Elena Rybakina did not seem impressed at all.
She even laughed a little as she entered the tennis stadium.
The big show is not her thing.
The Result
: Rybakina's response followed on the pitch and now she is in the final of a Grand Slam tournament for the second time in her career.
The current Wimbledon champion won the semi-finals at the Australian Open against Victoria Azarenka from Belarus 7: 6 and 6: 3.
Rybakina, 23, who was born in Moscow and was poached by the Kazakh Tennis Federation in 2018, is on a run in Melbourne.
In the round of 16 she managed the big surprise and defeated the world number one Iga Świątek in straight sets.
In the final on Saturday (from 9.30 a.m. German time) she will now face Belarusian Aryna Sabalenka.
Load and desire on serve:
A great strength of Rybakina is her serve.
By the semifinals she had produced 35 aces in that tournament.
This is also due to a precise ball throw.
With a very special technique, the Kazakh manages to make the ball barely move in the air.
This helps her hit the perfect "sweet spot" with her racquet when she serves.
Sometimes she's just a normal tennis player with a shaky arm.
It was easy to observe – of course – in their first service game.
It started with a double fault.
The fact that the 23-year-old still took a 1-0 lead was due to three subsequent aces within 90 seconds.
The Hello-Wake Game:
Azarenka had the momentum on her side.
In the first set she had caught up a 3:5 deficit.
At the score of 5:5 she had three break points.
Azarenka seemed to be able to pull the game on her side with her simple return tennis and the recurring left-right combinations.
But she missed this great triple chance.
Rybakina fended off all breakballs against her.
The Wimbledon champion chased her opponent with her powerful shots across the entire width of the court and also saved her serve to the target.
Although Azarenka was able to equalize again to make it 6:6, it was clear in the tie-break that Rybakina was now fully involved and had found her rhythm.
She played safe and variable.
After an hour and a minute, the first sentence was over - and you could already guess that
A lot of power, but also a lot of feeling:
As in her surprise coup against Świątek, Rybakina showed herself from two sides in this semi-final.
On the one hand, she smashed the balls over the net with brute force.
Particularly noteworthy on this windy evening in the Rod Laver Arena was her two-handed backhand, which Azarenka flew left and right around the ears more and more in the second set.
This is what Kazakhs are known for.
But she also repeatedly demonstrated her feeling for the ball.
The match ball to 4:2 in the second set was proof of that.
Rybakina was lured to the net by her opponent with a short ball.
She advanced and played a difficult half-volley with her backhand buttery short and cross over the net.
Azarenka was still running, but couldn't reach the ball.
The difficult coach
: Stefano Vuko is Rybakina's coach.
In this role, he can be very demanding for his player.
As always, Rybakina was calm and reserved, while Vukov seemed frantic and intense in the box.
The coach gave criticism and feedback.
"That's what happens when you always play so fast," he once said when Rybakina was 0:40 behind on his own serve.
What you also need to know: After winning the Wimbledon final, Vuko had his player's name tattooed on his arm.
So the relationship between the two can't be that bad.
From the outdoor court to the ultimate spotlight:
Grand Slam winner Rybakina was assigned to the outdoor courts by the organizers at the start of the tournament for her games.
This caused astonishment, and there was no official explanation.
The quiet Kazakh, who doesn't like to talk about her success story and her Russian origins, stayed cool about the seat number: "It's not so important which seat you start the tournament on, but which one you finish it on." Her journey actually ends now in the final of the Australian Open and on one of the biggest stages the tennis world has to offer.