Rybakina overpowers Halep to reach final and give Wimbledon headache

With a display of power tennis that had Centre Court gasping, Elena Rybakina reached her first grand slam final with a 6-3, 6-3 victory over Simona Halep. But in doing so the 23-year-old has also given Wimbledon a looming headache.

When the All England Club decided to ban Russian and Belarussian players from this year’s tournament, it was partly to try to avoid the scenes of the Duchess of Cambridge presenting the trophy to a Russian-born player.

However after this performance, there is the very real prospect of Rybakina – who was born in Russia and represented her home country throughout her childhood before switching to play for Kazakhstan when she was 19 – lifting the famous Venus Rosewater Dish when she faces Ons Jabeur on Saturday.

Certainly if she plays as well as she did against Halep, she will have every chance. The Romanian had won 12 straight matches at Wimbledon, including taking the 2019 title – the longest streak since Serena Williams won 20 matches in a row between 2015 and 2018. But here she was simply blown off court.

“It was a great match,” said Rybakina. “Simone is a great champion. I was really focused today and I was really happy with my performance. I was nervous of course as today was my first time on Centre Court but the matches before helped me.”

Rybakina may have been nervous but crucially she was able to disguise it with a conjuror’s sleight of hand. She won the opening game to love, crashing down three unreturnable serves along with a dainty drop shot, and then broke Halep in the next to go 2-0 up. Another easy hold followed, and the Kazakh was suddenly three games up in just eight minutes.

Halep faced a further break point in the next, but was at least able to stem the bleeding. However