“I’m not getting younger” – Rybakina’s priority for 2027 is not the career Grand Slam, but health

Elena Rybakina has won three of the four majors and needs only Roland-Garros for a career Grand Slam. Asked in New York on Saturday night whether that becomes the target for 2027, she answered with a calendar and a body rather than a trophy.

“The main priority, as I was saying before, I’m not getting younger, is try to keep myself healthy and definitely choose the calendar correctly, the training process,” said the 27-year-old. “Of course, the goal is always the biggest tournaments, you want to win them, so the Grand Slams, and just try to find the balance, try to be stable. We will see what’s going to happen, but definitely it’s still a lot of work to do. The job never done, to be honest.”

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Roland-Garros is the awkward one. She has reached the quarterfinals there twice, in 2021 and 2024, and has never gone further, which makes it the only Grand Slam where she has not played a semifinal. This year she lost in the second round to Yuliia Starodubtseva, the same player she beat 7-6 (6), 6-3 in the third round on the way to this title.

I feel young, but my body, throughout the years, some things not going away completely. Some issues are staying.

The surface is not the obstacle it looks. Her second title of the season came on the clay of Stuttgart, where she beat Karolina Muchova in the final. But completing the set would mean going deeper at the tournament where she has consistently gone least far.

The health answer is not an abstraction either. She retired from her Cincinnati quarterfinal against Iga Swiatek 23 days before winning the US Open. For a week there was no tennis in the plan at all. “For seven days I was just going from my hotel room to the gym, three hours there spending, a lot of recovery, treatments.”

She had already set out the longer-term version of the same argument earlier in the fortnight, at 27. “I feel young, but my body, throughout the years, some things not going away completely. Some issues are staying.”

She begins this journey on Monday as world No. 1 for the first time.