Elena Rybakina becomes World No. 1 after beating Qinwen Zheng at US Open 2026

Elena Rybakina became the new world No. 1. The second seed recovered from a lost first set to beat qualifier Qinwen Zheng 3-6, 6-1, 6-4 in the US Open quarterfinals on Wednesday at Arthur Ashe Stadium, reaching her first Flushing Meadows semifinal and locking in the top ranking. She ended Aryna Sabalenka’s 99-week stay at the top.

A week ago she was not even sure her left ankle would last a Grand Slam. The ranking was not a surprise on paper. Getting to New York in one piece was.

“It was not ideal, and I was stressed, of course,” Rybakina said of those first practices. “The first days when I came onsite, when we had to test the foot and everything, so it wasn’t easy.”

Her team thought she could get through. Four matches later she had not dropped a set, with only one tiebreak, against Yuliia Starodubtseva. Then she hit 29 winners and seven aces to beat Naomi Osaka 6-1, 6-4 and reach the last eight in Flushing Meadows for the first time.

Qinwen Zheng takes a set, then Elena Rybakina takes control

Qinwen Zheng had been the qualifier who would not go away. She came back from 0-5 against Madison Keys and again from 0-5 against Iga Swiatek. She took the first set here as well; the first Elena Rybakina had lost all of the tournament.

Rybakina reset. The second set went 6-1. The third was 6-4. After two hours and 14 minutes she had the win, a 5-1 head-to-head lead.

She has said more than once that the ranking is not the point. “The No. 1 ranking is, of course, one of the goals,” she said. “But I think the main focus for me, for the team, is to win the titles, and then the ranking will follow up. We go match by match, but obviously, we want to win the titles, the tournaments. So that, I would say, is the main goal.”

A year that closed a 5,000-point gap

The climb started last autumn. Rybakina won Ningbo, then beat Sabalenka in the WTA Finals final in Riyadh. In January, she came from 3-0 down in the deciding set to beat Sabalenka again and win the Australian Open. Stuttgart followed in April.

Toronto was harder: four three-set matches and nearly 11 and a half hours before Swiatek stopped her in the final. Cincinnati ended with a retirement in the first set.

At the end of 2025, Sabalenka had 9,870 points and Rybakina 4,350. Nine months later, the gap was 414, and Rybakina controlled her own fate.

Since last year’s US Open, she has won 62 tour-level matches, most on the WTA. She has four titles in that stretch, 16 Top-10 wins and a 16-6 record against that group. She leads the tour in winners (1,559) and aces (389).

She had already beaten a sitting world No. 1 nine times before becoming one herself. Only Gabriela Sabatini had more such wins before first reaching the top.

Rybakina is the 30th woman to reach No. 1 since 1975, the first from Kazakhstan. The work is not finished. A title would still mean more to her than the number next to her name.