US Open Final: Sabalenka Seeks Revenge as Rybakina Chases the Throne

The US Open women’s singles final could hardly have produced a more compelling matchup. Top seed Aryna Sabalenka will face second seed Elena Rybakina in a final that carries far more significance than the seeding suggests.

This is a battle for a Grand Slam title, but it is also a clash involving a lost No. 1 ranking, a chance for revenge and the opportunity to create history at Flushing Meadows.

Sabalenka is chasing a third consecutive US Open title. If she succeeds, she would become only the third woman in the Open Era, after Chris Evert and Serena Williams, to win the tournament three years in a row.

The Belarusian star will also play her fourth consecutive US Open final, underlining her remarkable consistency on the New York hard courts.

Her semifinal performance showed exactly how prepared she is for the challenge. Sabalenka defeated American Jessica Pegula 7-5, 6-2 with a dominant display of power tennis and aggressive groundstrokes.

She hit 29 winners compared with Pegula’s 12 and took complete control of the second set.

Pegula admitted afterward that there was little she could do against Sabalenka at that level, suggesting that the Belarusian could have beaten almost any player in the world with that kind of performance.

The victory also gave 28-year-old Sabalenka a new Open Era record for consecutive Grand Slam hard-court finals at the US Open. She has reached the final in every edition of the tournament since the 2023 Australian Open.

But Rybakina enters the final with her own major incentive.

Regardless of the result in the championship match, the Kazakh star will rise to world No. 1 in the rankings on Monday. She is therefore already set to take the top spot away from Sabalenka.

Winning the US Open title would make that achievement even more significant.

Rybakina knows she will need to raise her level to beat Sabalenka. Ahead of the final, she said she needs to improve her serving, increase the quality of her game and maintain an aggressive approach throughout the match.

For Sabalenka, however, this final means more than another Grand Slam opportunity.

She lost the world No. 1 ranking to the very opponent standing across the net from her. Now she has the chance to respond on the biggest stage by beating Rybakina and lifting the US Open trophy.

After reaching the final, Sabalenka made it clear that she was desperate to make the championship match and now wants to go one step further and win the title.

The final will also be the first US Open women’s singles championship match since the 2013 Victoria Azarenka–Serena Williams final to feature the tournament’s top two seeds.

One player is fighting to answer the loss of her throne. The other is trying to prove that she deserves to occupy it.

That makes Sabalenka vs Rybakina more than a Grand Slam final—it is a battle for the title, revenge and supremacy in women’s tennis.