Former champion Elena Rybakina is through to the 2024 Wimbledon Championships quarter-finals after a win via retirement against Anna Kalinskaya.
The Kazakhstani player won the Wimbledon Championships two years ago and looks every bit like a champion this year as well. She faced a familiar name in Kalinskaya, who has had a strong grass season, making the Berlin Open final.
The Russian, though, has had some bizarre luck when playing Rybakina because the last two times they played, she experienced physical issues. Their last match before this meeting happened at the Italian Open in 2023, and she injured herself, missing months after that injury.
She dealt with a physical problem in this match as well and had to call a medical timeout in the opening set. Kalinskaya's start to the match was much better. She was up a break but then lost that break after that medical timeout.
It was clear that whatever was going on impacted her play, but she has a long history of injuries, so it wasn't that unusual. Still, Rybakina wasn’t impacted by that and won the opening set 6-3, and she played very well, to be fair. She had seven aces, 18 winners and only 7 unforced errors, which was a good stat line for the former champion.
Kalinskaya wasn't bad by any means, but against Rybakina, you have to step up your hitting, and she wasn't really able to do that. She tried to do that in the second set, but it backfired as she missed a few balls and quickly found herself down 0-2.
Coming back from that early deficit was going to be difficult, and despite her best efforts, it didn't look like it was going ot happen. Rybakina took a 3-0 lead. After that, Kalinskaya opted to retire because she struggled physically, and there was no hope of turning around the match, and Rybakina, as any player, was happy to win, but not in that way.
“Definitely not the way I wanted to finish. Anna is a great player. I know she was suffering with a couple injuries. If it’s the wrist of course it’s very difficult to continue to play. I just wish her a speedy recovery.”