Home favourite Ashleigh Barty secured safe passage to the Australian Open last-16 stage on Friday, by knocking out Elena Rybakina, one of the most in-form players on tour at the moment.
Rybakina entered their third round showdown carrying an impressive 11-1 win-loss record this year, courtesy of a run to the final in Shenzhen and a title-winning campaign in Hobart, in the opening two weeks of the 2020 season. The 20-year-old is contesting just her third Grand Slam main draw, while Barty is the reigning Roland Garros champion, and a former quarterfinalist in Melbourne.
In an intriguing duel that got off to a tight start, experience prevailed as the top-ranked Aussie moved past the fast-rising Rybakina 6-3 6-2 to set up a clash with either Alison Riske or Julia Goerges, who is a good friend of Barty’s, and is playing doubles with her this fortnight in Melbourne.
“It’s really hard not to be friends with Jule, she’s an unbelievable person,” Barty said on court when asked about possibly playing Goerges next.
Barty has now won 10 of her last 12 meetings against top-30 opponents, and advances to the fourth round at Melbourne Park for a second consecutive year.
She is carrying a seven-match winning streak, after she became the first Australian woman since 2011 to lift a WTA trophy on home soil when she won the title in Adelaide last week.
“I think today was probably my sharpest match that I played. I felt really comfortable moving around the court. I felt like I found the middle of the racquet a lot sooner than my other matches,” Barty reflected on her third round victory.
“Particularly there were tough, long service games. I was able to get out of them and continue the momentum. I think all in all it was a pretty well-rounded performance.”
The first four games went against serve, as Rybakina kept taking the initiative, and Barty kept pegging her back.
The 20-year-old Russian-born Kazakh was showing great versatility, hitting powerful winners off both sides, and using her drop shot when needed to break up the pace. She was flaunting her wide array of weapons that explain why she’s been able to rise from 182 in the world at the start of 2019, to her current ranking of 26.
Barty is a problem-solver though, and after getting her first hold of the match to go up 3-2, the Queenslander never looked back, breaking Rybakina on a missed overhead, and marching to a one-set lead in 32 minutes.
The top seed started the second set with a break, but needed more than six minutes to consolidate her advantage, saving three break points before holding for 2-0.
Barty extended her gap thanks to a double fault from Rybakina to move ahead 4-1.
Barty survived another lengthy service game, saving three more break points to inch closer to victory. The 23-year-old had to fight off one last break point as she was serving for the match, and locked down the win on a wide backhand slice from Rybakina.
Barty finished the match with a clean 12/14 success rate at the net along with 28 winners that included five aces.
“She’s an exceptional ball-striker, big game, big serve as well. At times today I got a few too many looks at second serves, which was able to shift my core position up a little bit,” Barty said of Rybakina.
“I felt like today I was able to bring the match back onto my racquet a little bit. I watched a few of her matches from Hobart. She played Lizette [Cabrera], one of our Aussie girls, down in Hobart. We watched that matched purely out of interest with Lizette. It was really good to see a young player who's a great ball-striker, good mover, has no fear out there.”