Elena Rybakina (Reuters Photo)

NEW YORK CITY: Elena Rybakina’s US Open appeared to have ended before it had begun.A foot and ankle injury in Cincinnati saw the Kazakh limp out of the tournament midway, leaving her Flushing Meadows dream in tatters and her pursuit of the world No. 1 ranking suddenly hanging by a thread.Rybakina took a week off, giving her left foot time to heal.When she kickstarted her campaign in New York ten days later, she began cautiously, testing her foot, especially on her serve, the shot most troubled by the injury. By Saturday afternoon, caution had turned into conviction.A remarkable display of mental and physical resilience carried Rybakina to her first US Open crown, a 6-4, 5-7, 6-2 win over Aryna Sabalenka, the powerful Belarusian, and her third Grand Slam title.And by the end of it, the woman who had spent the past 24 months negotiating upheaval was sitting atop the tennis world.“I always believed that it's possible,” she said, her expression joyful. Smiles punctuating her sentences.She had won Wimbledon in 2022 and reached the Australian Open final the following year, but there was no Grand Slam title.“I feel like now I have a great team, great people around me, and we just continue the work. It finally paid off, and I'm super happy, very proud.”In her coaching corner is 39-year-old Croat Stefano Vukov and Stanislav Khmarskyi, who joined the setup as co-coach in 2025. Italian Aldo Chiari, is her strength and conditioning coach and Adam Jones is her hitting partner.Vukov, the most audible of her bench courtside, was banned from the Tour for eight months (January 2025 to August) for a breach of the code of conduct regarding his behaviour toward Rybakina.The Kazakh began the 2025 season working with Goran Ivanisevic and later signed on Davide Sanguinetti, a friend of Vukov’s. Yet Vukov remained a constant presence in her tennis life away from the cameras.At the 2025 WTA Finals, she declined a photo with WTA CEO Portia Archer demonstrating her displeasure over the suspension of Vukov. Archer later resigned, and Rybakina's rise to No. 1 has added another layer to a relationship and a period that has often played out under intense scrutiny.Through it all, Rybakina kept playing.And now she has done more than simply return to the top. She has built the most complete season of her career, winning the WTA Finals (2025), the Australian Open and the US Open while becoming world No. 1.“I feel like this tournament was more stressful because I was playing for No. 1, and then, of course, this injury which happened the week before,” she said. “So every day was kind of a challenge, but I felt like in these situations I was more calm than when similar things were happening, like, before.”Even in the final, with the title within touching distance, the nerves came.Serving for the championship, Rybakina hit two double faults before closing out the match with her 12th ace. It was an appropriate snapshot of the evening, pressure, risk, then the nerve to trust her biggest weapon when it mattered most.“On the other side is a great player, and she can go for her shots and that I actually need to win it myself. Yeah, I feel it was just a lot of pressure, nerves.”Rybakina is already looking beyond the celebration, even if the next target is obvious. A career Grand Slam is now within sight, with the French Open the only major missing from her collection.“Well, the main priority, as I was saying before, I'm not getting younger, is try to keep myself healthy and definitely choose the calendar correctly,” she said.“The goal is always the biggest tournaments, you want to win them,.”She has climbed from the brink of missing the US Open to winning it, from No. 2 to No. 1, from a year of uncertainty to a season of remarkable success.And yet, for Rybakina, the climb is not finished.“Yeah, we will see what's going to happen, but definitely it's still a lot of work to do,” she said. “The job is never done, to be honest.”