Defending champion Elena Rybakina continued her 2023 Wimbledon Championships run by beating native hopeful Katie Boulter in two sets.
The Brit recently won her maiden trophy on the WTA Tour announcing herself as a player to watch at Wimbledon. Her play has been pretty good but unfortunately, she ran into the force that is Elena Rybakina.
The Kazakhstani player surprised herself and many others by winning her maiden Grand Slam trophy at Wimbledon last year. She's been flashing some strong potential for years but things simply never clicked for her until Wimbledon of last year.
She proved this year that the run was anything but a surprise as she booked another Grand Slam final earlier this year. She lost to Sabalenka in the Australian Open final this year but she's hoping to book another one in London. Roland Garros was cut short by an illness but fortunately, so far Rybakina mostly cruised through the draw.
Boulter wasn't spared by Rybakina who smashed her pretty convincingly in a match that didn't even last a full hour. The formula was rather simple for Rybakina. She played her typical tennis that is hard-hitting and Boulter couldn't do much against that.
The opening set finished 6-1 in favour of the Kazakhstani player who had six aces and dropped only three points on her serve. Rybakina had 11 winners and 7 unforced errors in the set going 11/11 behind her first serve. She could afford to be as aggressive as she was because she was hitting more than missing and the 'math was mathing'.
The second set saw Boulter adjust a bit which prevented Rybakina from hitting many aces but she still dominated on her serve. The Brit also attempted to play a bit more aggressively but trading blows with Rybakina is ill-advised unless you're named Aryna Sabalenka and even then it only works sometimes.
Boulter didn't really play a good match overall as she had only 7 winners and 14 unforced errors. The killer was that she didn't serve that well and that hurt her the most. It's one of the shots that could have put Rybakina under a bit more pressure but it wasn't there for Boulter.
While it didn't prove that interesting in the end it could have been more competitive. Rybakina likely would have won either way as the matchup favoured her heavily. The final score was 6-1 6-1 as she had 7 aces, 19 winners, and 14 unforced errors. Up next, the defending champion will play against Beatriz Haddad Maia.
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