After dominating a field of her most dangerous peers, and claiming $5.2 million—the largest purse in the history of pro tennis, men’s or women’s—Elena Rybakina held up the champ’s trophy at the WTA Finals. It was the first time she had won that title.
Rybakina barely qualified for this year-end event for the season’s top players, due to a murky start to 2025. But at her best, her tennis is powerful, lucid, and economical. She controls points start to finish, doesn’t run more than she has to, and looks luxuriously unhurried. That was the sort of tennis she brought against world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka in Saturday’s final, which she won, 6-3, 7-6(0). True to form, Rybakina was a vision of chilly restraint in victory, holding her trophy up on the purple indoor hard court in Riyadh. It was a depressingly apt scene for our times: a triumph of women’s athletic brilliance, sponsored by Saudi generosity.
As astonishing as her tennis had been, Rybakina invited even more attention with her behavior after the victory. When invited to pose for a bog-standard post-tournament photo alongside Sabalenka and WTA chief executive Portia Archer, Rybakina refused. She stood to the side, made a hand gesture, and looked away while the photo was taken. Her defiance of normal protocol produced this mystifying image of a CEO standing only with the runner-up, at the capstone event of the tour that she runs:
It was not difficult to suss out the reasoning behind Rybakina’s snub. The WTA had investigated her coach Stefano Vukov, then banned him for one year, starting at the end of January 2025. It was Archer who wrote to the coach announcing the tour’s decision, and in that letter, which was obtained by The Athletic, she said the tour determined that Vukov had engaged in “abuse of authority” and “physical and verbal abuse.”
Even looking solely at his behavior during matches, Vukov was known for an aggressive, antagonistic style of coaching. The tour’s investigation delved into his off-court behavior as well. Archer’s letter cited a few examples of behavior that violated the tour’s code of conduct: calling Rybakina “stupid” and “retarded,” making her cry, pushing her beyond her physical limits, and overwhelming her with texts and calls during a brief pause in their coaching partnership.
“It’s clear to me you have a toxic relationship,” Archer wrote in the letter, which acknowledged evidence of a romantic relationship between player and coach. Vukov was fired by Rybakina in August 2024, before he signed back on at the start of 2025, and continued coaching her throughout the season—even though under the rules of the ban, he wasn’t even allowed into stadiums or practice courts. After Vukov appealed the ban and entered private arbitration with the tour, it was lifted in August.
Rybakina surged in the last two months of the season and narrowly qualified for the WTA Finals, which only lets in the season’s top eight performers. Having just made the cut, she went undefeated in group play and the elimination rounds, beating four of the top five players in the world. I was especially awestruck by her performance in the final. In 2025, a season where Sabalenka reigned supreme over the field, Rybakina still won two of their three matchups and held quadruple match-point in the third. Though she struggles with consistency, Rybakina’s peak level, fueled by the purity of her ball-striking and spot serving, is about as high as tennis permits.
At the press conference after Saturday’s final, Rybakina was asked about snubbing Archer, and declined to comment. When asked later if she had reconciled with the tour after the Vukov investigation, she had this reply: “Well, I think we’re all doing our job, and we had the opportunity to have conversations, but in the end, they never happened.”
Rybakina is known for the minimum viable amount of engagement with press, even for innocuous questions. This specific topic was unlikely to draw much more of a forthcoming response. Former player and current coach Pam Shriver, who was something of a public whistleblower on Vukov two years ago, has remained openly critical of him ever since. Having told her own story of abuse by a coach, Shriver has consistently called for more safeguards against inappropriate coach-player relationships. After Saturday’s snub, she was unimpressed by Rybakina’s attitude toward the tour. “Imagine winning more prize money in one tournament than the entire Original Nine over their collective careers, then dissing WTA CEO because the CEO has tried to ensure stronger safeguards in your sports… it’s hard to imagine,” Shriver wrote.
Rybakina is now in a curious position. She remains one of the most gifted players in the sport, with plenty of years of her prime ahead of her. She is a 26-year-old free to employ the coach of her choosing, and she has chosen to continue employing a coach that the tour has sanctioned for abusive behavior toward her. In general, Rybakina occupies a place of indifference toward the trappings of pro tennis, even while excelling at it, and in this case, she seems unmoved by the ethical concerns of its leadership. At its signature event, the WTA crowned a champion who works with a coach that was found by the WTA to have abused her; she was paid her prize money by the sovereign wealth fund of a country where women could only recently drive cars.