Elena Rybakina was stunned already in her second match of the 2023 grass-court season, losing to Donna Vekic at the Berlin Open.
Going into the grass court season in 2023, it wasn't a surprise that the Kazakh was considered the biggest favourite at every tournament that she entered. Rybakina is the reigning Wimbledon champion and even according to Andy Roddick, she's the best grass court player in the world on the WTA Tour.
After comfortably cruising past Polina Kudermetova in the first round of the 2023 Berlin Open, the 24-year-old took on Donna Vekic from Croatia. The two met only once, and it was at the Olympics two years ago, and the Kazakh was the victorious player back then.
But this time around, Vekic, who recently revealed that she wanted to quit tennis at one moment, wanted to give her opponent a good fight. The first set of their match looked exactly like a typical grass-court match.
Although with five break points, no breaks were made and it had to be decided in a tie-break. Utilizing her grass-court qualities, Rybakina could rely on her serve in the first set, hitting eight aces and winning the tie-break 7-1.
But Vekic wasn't ready to give up and she put on a very good fight. At first, she managed to force a decider when she broke the Kazakh's serve in the second set, and since she didn't offer her opponent any break points, the Croatian won the set 6-3.
Yet, her comeback wasn't over in the third set. Once again, Vekic was almost perfect. She had only one break point again, and once more she made a perfect use of it while remaining flawless on her own serve.
After two hours and 16 minutes, Vekic won the match 6-7(1), 6-3, 6-4 to beat Rybakina and record her first-ever win against a Top 5 player. Moving into the quarterfinals, she will now take on lucky loser Elina Avanesyan.
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