Elena Rybakina has stated that reaching the world No. 1 ranking is definitely one of her goals ahead of the 2026 Dubai Tennis Championships. The Kazakh player, currently ranked No. 3, recently won her second Grand Slam title at the Australian Open. With top players absent from the Dubai event, she has a chance to climb higher in the standings.
Elena Rybakina, who secured her second Grand Slam victory at the Australian Open last month, is currently at her career-high ranking of world No. 3, a position she first achieved in June 2023. She holds 7,523 points following her quarter-final appearance at the WTA 1000 event in Doha last week. This places her 280 points behind second-ranked Iga Swiatek and 3,347 points behind world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka.
Neither Sabalenka nor Swiatek is participating in this week's WTA 1000 tournament in Dubai, offering Rybakina an opportunity to rise to No. 2 and narrow the gap to the top spot. Rybakina leads the Race to Riyadh, the annual rankings for qualifying to the WTA Finals.
In media comments before the Dubai Championships, Rybakina addressed her aspirations for the No. 1 ranking. “Well, it’s definitely a goal,” she said. “But depends, of course, how the other players are going to compete and what results are going to be.”
She emphasized the demands of the season: “The season is so long that I know there is no time to stop, stop working. You need to improve every day. We have so many tournaments. Yeah, you need to catch up, and you need to keep on going.”
Rybakina, 26, who won Wimbledon in 2022, added that her aim is “to go higher in the ranking, to win another Grand Slam. Yeah, we will see just how this season goes.”
Regarding surfaces, she named hard courts as her favorite after grass, noting good results across all types but a preference for faster ones. On Dubai, where she resides, Rybakina said: “I really love Dubai. I’ve been practising and doing pre-season on these courts. Of course, they resurface them. But everything is familiar. So yeah, it’s good.”
