Elena Rybakina has resumed practice at Flushing Meadows ten days after an injury ended her Cincinnati Open quarterfinal, and the timing of the draw has handed her something close to an extra week of recovery.
The No. 2 seed retired against Iga Swiatek on 20 August while trailing 1-4 in the opening set, stopping mid-service game and attempting one further serve before conceding. She said afterwards in Ohio that she could not push off, and that walking was painful. An MRI followed the next day.
The update. Speaking to reporters in New York on Saturday, Rybakina said she had returned to the practice court and was managing the problem day by day, with adjustments still being made. She framed the decision to compete as conditional rather than settled. “I always want to go on court when I’m 100 per cent sure,” she said, adding that the final major of the season was one every player would want to contest.
The recovery has not been linear. Rybakina travelled to New York without practising on site, was absent from the published practice schedule in the middle of the week, and withdrew from the mixed doubles championship, where she had been due to partner Taylor Fritz. That withdrawal now reads as a straightforward decision to protect the singles.
The diagnosis remains imprecise. Reporting on the nature of the injury has not converged. Most outlets have described a left ankle problem, which matches Rybakina’s own account of being unable to push off; at least one has referred to the heel, and initial fears on the night pointed to the Achilles. Rybakina has not named a specific structure publicly, and no formal diagnosis has been released. She has said the issue had been troubling her for some time before it worsened over consecutive weeks of matches in Toronto and Cincinnati.
The schedule helps. First-round singles at the US Open is spread across three days, from Sunday to Tuesday, and Rybakina is not among the players scheduled for the opening day. She meets American wild card Thea Frodin, a match expected in the back half of that window. One outlet has placed it on Tuesday; the tournament’s daily order of play is the authority, and it is released the evening before.
The practical effect is the same either way. A player who could not walk comfortably ten days ago gets additional time before she has to compete, and then faces an opponent ranked far outside the seedings in a match she would expect to control.
What is actually at stake. Rybakina is defending 240 points in New York, from a fourth-round exit last year that stands as her best result at the tournament. That is a modest total to protect, and it is the reason her position in the race for the No. 1 ranking is unusually favourable. Reaching the semifinals would guarantee her the top spot for the first time in her career, regardless of how Aryna Sabalenka fares.
Getting there requires the ankle to hold through five matches on hard courts in late-summer New York. The draw does not make that straightforward. Swiatek, who beat her in the Toronto final and was leading when the injury struck in Cincinnati, is the projected quarterfinal opponent — a third meeting in barely a month. Naomi Osaka is the projected fourth-round test.
Rybakina said she and her team had discussed what would happen in the worst case. That is a reasonable thing for a player to have planned for. It is also not the language of someone certain the problem is behind her.
