A Queen against a Queen

A strange feeling that the roles are being reversed...

Let’s be honest, the start of Iga’s year has been a string of cold sweats. Since the United Cup, she’s been piling up worrying chokes: a 4-6, 2-6 rout against Coco and, above all, that 6-0 she took against Bencic in the final. Even here in Melbourne, she came close to disaster against Yuan Yue in the first round (down 5-3 before scrambling through in the tie-break) and then took another 1-6 from Kalinskaya. But the real alarm bell is her collapse against the best players. Her stats against the Top 10 are in free fall: in 2024 she was handling it, but since 2025 she’s been stuck at 50% wins (9–9) and has lost 5 of her last 6 clashes against the elite. The Polish queen no longer scares the top dogs.

On the other side, it’s the complete opposite. The Kazakh is in the form of her life, full Ice Queen mode. She ended 2025 like a runaway train with 17 wins from 18 matches and she still hasn’t lost a set at this Australian Open. She radiates a calm that violently contrasts with Iga’s tears. The head-to-head is brutal too: Ryba leads 5–2 on hard courts and all their meetings on this surface have ended in straight sets. Elena has that flat power that paints the lines and stops Iga from setting up her topspin.

In their last official clash in November, Ryba handed Iga a 6-0 in the deciding set. She’s got the keys to shut her down mentally. With 81.2% of service games won this season compared to just 62.7% for the Pole, Elena has a safety margin the world no. 1 no longer has. Iga is surviving on grit, but Ryba is ruling through sheer power. Between the 6-0 in November and the current doubts of the no. 1 against the Top 10, everything points to the end of the road for Iga. We’re backing the choice of raw power.