Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova lost to Elena Rybakina in the semi-finals of the Qatar TotalEnergies Open

In the semi-finals of the Qatar TotalEnergies Open, a Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) 1000 category tournament ending in Doha with a prize fund of $3.2 million, Russian Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova lost in two games to Elena Rybakina from Kazakhstan. Despite this result, overall the performance of the 32-year-old tennis player can be considered successful. After a long break, she returned to the top 30 in the world and in the next three months has a good chance of getting closer to the top ten or even entering it.

A very important period is coming in the career of 32-year-old Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, the most experienced Russian tennis player in the top 100 of the world rankings. The owner of 12 WTA titles has never hidden that she dreams of one day finally getting into the top ten, and now this, albeit still distant, goal looks quite achievable.

Let us remember that in the first half of last season, Pavlyuchenkova resumed her performances after a long break due to a knee injury. The culmination of that comeback was Roland Garros, where the Russian, who was ranked 333rd in the WTA classification at that time, beat three seeded opponents and reached the quarterfinals. After that, Pavlyuchenkova had limited playing practice for several months, but this season she has not yet missed a single week of tournaments. Moreover, in February the Russian woman has already played two semi-finals: the first – last week in Linz at the 500 category tournament, where she lost only to the future champion Jelena Ostapenko, the second – in Doha at the first 1000 category competition this year, where yesterday she lost to an excellent the form of the fourth racket of the world, Elena Rybakina from Kazakhstan.

Despite the absence of world number two Belarusian Aryna Sabalenka, who took a break after her triumph at the Australian Open, the Qatar TotalEnergies Open has assembled a very solid line-up of participants. The list of seeds, which was headed by world ranking leader Iga Swiatek, included seven representatives of the top ten. It is not surprising that on the way to the semi-finals, Pavlyuchenkova continually encountered quite dangerous opponents, including the current Wimbledon champion, the eighth racket of the world, Marketa Vondrousova, who opposed her in the 1/8 finals. The Russian has not been able to beat tennis players from the top 10 since her most successful Grand Slam tournament – Roland Garros 2021, where she defeated Sabalenka in the third round and eventually reached the final. Nevertheless, Pavlyuchenkova beat the unpredictable Czech player quite confidently, and then also beat the experienced American Danielle Collins in two games.

The match against Rybakina did not work out for Pavlyuchenkova. In the middle of the match, she gave away six games in a row, in the end she tried to catch on, but in the end she lost – 2:6, 4:6. Nevertheless, in general, the Russian’s performance in Doha can be considered successful. For the first time in almost three years, she made it this far through the grid of such a representative tournament, as a result of which she will noticeably improve her position in the ranking, where she will rise by 8 steps and take 24th place. Considering that from mid-February to the end of May last year, Pavlyuchenkova scored only 156 rating points, and she is playing well now, she has excellent prospects for returning to the top twenty. Moreover, consistently showing good results at tournaments like the Qatar TotalEnergies Open, of which there will be five more in the same period of this season, the former eleventh racket in the world may well aim for his first breakthrough into the top 10.

Meanwhile, Iga Swiatek, whose opponent in the semifinals, Czech Karolina Pliskova, withdrew from the game due to a lower back injury, made it somewhat easier for herself to solve the problem of preserving the title of the first racket of the world, which Aryna Sabalenka could take from her in the near future. She not only defended the points she scored last year in Doha, but also improved her total. However, the Belarusian is still very little behind in terms of points, and the final against Rybakina, to whom the Polish tennis player had previously lost three out of four matches, will be extremely important for Szwiatek.

Evgeniy Fedyakov